Evaluation, Question 4: Ellie Scott.

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

When producing our coursework, we used several different sources of technology in order to complete our coursework successfully. We used a variety of websites in order to complete the research for our coursework. We used websites to research ideas for our video, our digi-pack and our magazine advert to use other artist's work to inspire us to complete our coursework. To look at other artist's work, we used You Tube regularly, to analyse various videos, looking at factors such as camera work, mise-en-scene and the narrative of the video. We also used search engines such as Google in order to research for the preparation of our video, such as prop lists, location shots and costume research. One of the key factors in which we used the internet for was searching for our costumes, we used masks of politicians within our video and managed to buy these successfully off the internet. We mainly used the internet before we made our video; researching to prepare for our video, looking at factors such as genre characteristics, similar bands, songs and props. We also used the website ‘wordle’ within the process of completing our coursework. This website allowed us to make mind maps of all the key words associated with our work, the mind maps allowed us to incorporate and organise our ideas before starting our coursework. Topics we made into mind maps include; setting ideas, costume ideas, song choices and key words associated with our coursework. 

Here is the blog post link displaying our word clouds, using the website 'wordle': 

courseworkhttp://gliscoproductions.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/word%20cloud.

When producing our coursework, we used blogger to report updates of our work and to inform both our teacher and the examiner of an up-to-date account of our coursework. As a group, every time we progressed with pieces of work, such as completing a day of filming or completing some research for our coursework, we would post about it on blogger so it is accessible to the examiner as well as our teacher. To add to this, we also used programmes on the computer such as Final Cut and Photo Shop. We used Photo Shop to edit our magazine advert and our album digi-pack, we used this programme in order to make photographs look precise and eye-catching and we also used this programme to create the font used and also make it look professional, bold and colourful. This programme was very helpful as it made both our magazine advert as well as our digi-pack look extremely professional and suitable to that of our brief. It was difficult to use and as a group we did struggle at times, however eventually we managed to use it effectively. Lastly, we used Final Cut to edit our music video; this is a very helpful website and helped us to edit our video professionally. We used features such as the razor tool and markers to help us edit our video successfully. We found this programme easy to use as we had previously used within the beginning of year 13 to make a practice music video, which we made to the song, 'Its not unusual' by Tom Jones. Here is a link to watch this video: http://youtu.be/3Zmk6aDvuOc. Also, using Final Cut we made an animatic story board of our video to give people a visual idea of what our video is going to look like, here is the link to watch this video: http://gliscoproductions.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/blog-post.html. Also, here is a link to our rough cut of our music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34pigPEBH3c&feature=relmfu.

Our group were able to use the Sanyo HD camera to film our coursework, this camera was very good and made our footage look very clear and clean cut when we came to edit it on the computer. We, as a group, feel very privileged to have been able to use this camera as it was very efficient and definitely helped us in getting successful footage for our coursework. We used features such as white balancing the camera. this feature enabled us to ensure that the camera displayed all colours; making them bold and clear. To film our video we also used a tri-pod in order to ensure that our footage didn’t look unstable; the tri-pod helped us in gaining clear and stable footage. It also allowed us to film footage in various different positions without making the camera wobble, this therefore was very helpful as all our footage was stable and did not wobble and look unprofessional. Overall, as a group we managed well when using both the tri-pod and the camera, we were able to use all the controls successfully and use the tri-pod efficiently, putting it up and down quickly and easily when we needed to do so throughout days of filming.

When on location shooting, we did find that the weather was the biggest problem that we faced. Due to the fact that we filmed various times throughout December, we often faced very grey, dull days and often faced rain. This was a large problem as when it rained we were unable to film as we didn’t want to damage the camera or the tri-pod. We also found it hard to film when the forecast was really dull and dark as the footage didn’t look bright, colourful and of the best contrast, which therefore affected the quality of our video. Another problem we faced was the position of the tri-pod when we were filming in difficult and un-even areas. Due to the fact that our video is filmed throughout the whole of London, we had to film on bridges, steps and in very overcrowded places for example, to get the correct shots for our video. This was difficult when positioning the tri-pod as it was often un-balanced and produced un-even and un-professional looking shots for our coursework. To try and solve both of these problems we tried to plan our filming days around the weather, primarily trying to film on sunny days to increase the quality of our footage. In order to try and solve the problems with the tri-pod, we tried to find suitable places to film that would not cause difficulties with the tri-pod, filming in stable and less crowded places within London which is obviously hard to find. The fact that our group was able to use both a camera and a tri-pod from school definitely helped us when producing our coursework; both the camera and the tri-pod were of brilliant quality and improved the quality of our music video.

When editing and completing our music video, we used Final Cut. Yet again the fact that the school was able to provide us with Final Cut to edit our music video helped us massively. The editing programme helped us to improve our music video by allowing us to edit on the beat of the music, improve the quality of certain, rather dreary shots, arrange our footage correctly and also enable us to add details such as our production name and individual names to the video. As a group, we found Final Cut difficult to use at the beginning of the year, but as we got used to the programme we found it easy to use. Also, learning skills such as how to lighten certain shots and using marker tools to enable us to edit on the beat of the song, improved our understanding of the programme and made us more efficient when editing our video. After we completed our music video, we had to complete a magazine advert and an album digi-pack, in order to create this we used Photo Shop. Personally, I found Photo Shop harder to user than Final Cut, as the programme was brand new to me, as with Final Cut I had used in previously within year 12. Photo Shop was very confusing when I first worked on it, however once I had learnt the basic skills from a tutorial, I found it easier and less confusing to use. The special effects that we used when producing our magazine advert and album digi-pack really helped improve the quality of our work. Effects such as brightening and editing photographs to cut out the background and to make the colours look clearer and brighter definitely improved the quality of our work. Improving the quality of photographs and font for our magazine advert and digi-pack was very time-consuming and at times hard to complete, however we are very thankful that we were able to use the schools facilities as they were extremely helpful and definitely improved the quality of our work.


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Evaluation, Question 1: Ellie Scott.

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

Our music video is a mixture of performance, narrative and is also concept driven; our video follows both David Cameron and Nick Clegg around London, with the added scenes of performance and the concept of Britain and the patriotic theme. Our video, due to the focus on the two politicians and our own interpretation on the characters, our video is very much comedy based. Traditional music videos only normally include one or two of the following themes; performance, narrative and concept, however our video includes all three, this has been purposely done to try and appeal to our target audience and make our video both entertaining and exciting. Our video in relation to Andrew Goodwin’s analysis follows many of the factors within his theory on music video analysis. The first factor of this particular theory is how music videos demonstrate genre characteristics. Our music video appeals to the Punk/Rock genre and in order to target our typical audience we have made our video very rebellious and troublesome whilst including the two politicians; Nick Clegg and David Cameron. This is shown within our video with the scenes at St. Pauls and the protests that took place, the protests present the theme of anarchy and the hatred towards the government within Britain; which is also reflected within the lyrics of ‘London Calling’, which is focused on anarchy against the government during the 1980's. This rebellious and troublesome theme is also represented within our magazine advert and our album digi-pack with factors such as graffiti painted on the politicians, the bold and eye-catching font and the un-stereotypical photographs of both Nick Clegg and David Cameron swearing. This therefore refers to the second point within Goodwin’s analysis, focusing on the relationship between lyrics and the visuals. The lyrics within the song are illustrated with the scenes at St. Pauls, proving the anger within Britain over the government and their policies over time. To add to this, as a group we managed to fit as many visuals with the lyrics of the song as possible, we included a scene of the two politicians at Abbey Road and the lyrics mention the Beatles; an iconic British band, this again fitting with British theme of our video. 

The third factor of Andrew Goodwin’s theory is something we definitely, as a group, purposely tried to include within our music video. The third point is about how the visuals have a relationship with music. Throughout the majority of our music video, we edited to the beat of the music to ensure that there was a relationship between the music and the visuals. We edited the video so that on every change of setting or shot it changed on the beat of the music, this factor also makes our music video more entertaining and exciting as the music has a very fast beat, therefore the edits are quick and snappy to yet again appeal to our target audience. Andrew Goodwin also explains within his analysis of music videos about how the record label of artists tends to want a lot of the music video to be focused on the band/singer. Within our music video, we have incorporated this and focused predominantly on our two main characters, the politicians, but have also included shots of the whole band. The penultimate factor of Goodwin’s analysis focuses on the notion of looking and the voyeuristic treatment of the female body, within our video we have not included this particular factor as the notion of looking as well as the female body are not topics focused on within our video due to political references and the prime focus being on London. The last factor looks into intertextuality, this refers to references made to other films, TV shows, music videos etc. Within our video, we have included sights and shots that have been included within other media sources; these include the shot on Abbey Road and key landmarks such as the London Eye, the Thames and Big Ben, all are commonly included within film, on TV and within music videos. An example of intertextuality is the shot at Abbey Road, this was obviously done by the Beatles and was also re-made within an episode of The Simpsons.

Throughout our music video we tried to portray a patriotic theme and a British theme, we also tried to appeal to our target audience from the Punk/Rock genre; a rebellious and troublesome audience. We edited our video on the beat, making it very fast paced in order to appeal to our target audience. We also, to try and appeal to our target audience and present the British theme used several factors involving mise-en-scene. The mise-en-scene that we included within our video includes things such as; suits as the politicians costumes, cups and saucers for cups of tea, traditional British newspapers such as The Sun, settings such as the Tube and famous London landmarks, a ‘Where’s Wally’ scene and well-known British stores. All of the mise-en-scene that we included within our video was purposely included to make our video more patriotic and stick to the British theme throughout. The use of mise-en-scene, the song and its lyrics ensure that our video conveys a British theme continuously; the lyrics of the song discuss the problems within Britain during the 1980’s such as the Miners’ Strike and public unrest due to government decisions. This yet again relating to one of Andrew Goodwin’s theory within his analysis of music videos on the relationship between music and visuals.

Throughout our video we used a variety of camera shots to ensure that our video follows the traditional forms and conventions of established music videos. Within our video we used several different camera shots; long shots, medium shots, close ups and extreme close ups, as well as following the forms of traditional music videos, we also chose to do this in order to appeal to our target audience. Our target audience would want to watch a video with a variety of shots as it would make the video more complex, exciting and entertaining for the viewer; therefore making it an enjoyable viewing experience in instead of it being full of the same shots, making it common and uninteresting. The editing of our video is also similar to that of the traditional music video; editing on the beat of the music. Many other artists do this as it makes the video more exciting and also shows a relationship between the music and the visuals. In the case of our music video, due to the fact that ‘London Calling’ is a very upbeat and fast paced song, it makes our video more eye-catching and definitely more exciting.

In order to successfully ensure that our video was similar to that of a real music video, I looked at various music videos at the beginning of the year. I analysed both, 'Judas' by Lady Gaga and 'Learn to fly' by the Foo Fighters. I looked into the conventions of these videos, such as; the links with Andrew Goodwin's analysis of music videos, the themes of the videos and factors of mise-en-scene. From the 'Learn to fly' video, I was particularly inspired by the comedy elements of the video, the men dressed as women, was an idea that made us think of using costumes and mise-en-scene effectively within our coursework, and therefore inspired us to use masks.  Within this particular video, costumes are very important, as one member of the band is acting as several different characters, so without the costume changes, the video would definitely not be as effective and entertaining to the audience. 'Judas' by Lady Gaga also includes a lot of different costume changes and different settings, the video includes very exaggerated settings, this gave us the idea of featuring lots of various settings within our video; including several London landmarks. Analysing music videos was definitely helpful when making our own music video as we could use these videos that we have analysed as inspiration. 
Our video also conforms to that of Richard Dyer's star theory as our video focuses predominantly on the two politicians. We have done this purposely as we wanted David Cameron and Nick Clegg to be the prime focus, we managed to do this by including several close up shots of the two characters and due to the fact that the whole video follows the two politicians around London, we have managed to present the two characters as stars of the video. 

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Question 1 - Evaluation - Lucy Clark

Question 1 - In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When we brainstormed our ideas for our music video we decided that we wanted to do a music video that was not of the typical type. Once we had put our final idea together, we thought that the use of the politicians masks would satisfy this as it is different and not what you would expect from a student film.

We also deviated away from the typical structure of a music video and used performance, narrative and concept, something which is uncommon in a modern day music video (normally only 2 of these are used). As well as this, the comedy of the video is also unusual as a lot of the time a music video tells a story in a more serious way. The comedy side of our video we feel really makes it stand out amongst others which are perhaps of a more serious tone. Therefore by doing this, we feel that it will attract a wider audience too.


We feel that our music video complied with that mentioned in Andrew Goodwin’s theory featured in ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ (1992). Our music video complied ironically with the genre characteristics, for example, we tried to show a kind of rebellious side to the politicians because the punk genre normally consists of quite unruly personalities and we wanted to show this in our video, but in a less obvious way. As well as this, there is a relationship between the footage we filmed and the lyrics of the song. We purposely did this because we wanted to include the narrative aspect to our video, for example the footage at St Pauls showed the political crisis that our country is experiencing and the footage we filmed at Abbey Road matched the lyrics “phoney Beatle-mania has bitten the dust”, this also explains the relationship between the music and the visuals and has an intertextual reference. We used close ups on during the performance part of our video, in particular David Cameron as normally, a record label would insists that this was required in order to promote the artist(s). This is done to create a visual style/motif which will appear across further work.

Mise-en-scene was a big factor which we in-cooperated into our video because we feel that this too makes a video more memorable and different to others. The use of masks and props such as tea cups & saucers, magazines and newspapers which help to describe aspects of London we feel were effective in doing so. We used tea cups as we thought that because they are a typically British object, that it would further support the British idea that we were putting forward in our video.

After looking at videos similar to this one such as Blur ‘For Tomorrow’ and The Smiths ‘Panic’ we liked the way they had portrayed the cities, which is what we intended to do with London. The Blur video visited landmarks in London which we also did, although by doing theirs in black and white, it gave a more vintage quality to the camera work, portraying London as it used to be seen. We intended to use some black and white footage in our video, for example where it says “a nuclear error” we were going to use a piece of footage from archive.com of a nuclear power station in black and white. We decided not to do this in the end however, because we thought that the old footage wouldn’t fit in with the modern style of our video. Another influential video is The Verve's 'Bitter Sweet Symphony'. Set in London, the video follows Richard Ashcroft as he walks through busy London streets, ignoring everything around him including people and traffic. In some ways, this video resembles ours with the idea of walking through London and disregarding the general public. Lily Allen's original, low budget music video of her song 'LDN' which follows Lily around London and also features some footage of London landmarks such as the London eye, Buckingham Palace, a park overlooking the city and the underground again is similar to ours. The video was low budget like ours and I feel that this video shows that even for such a well known and influential performer, a video like this can work. 


Before we began to film our music video, I looked at some other videos and director Hype Williams' work (http://gliscoproductions.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/hype-williams.html). I found it fascinating through researching and analysing videos the amount of work and money that goes into a large budget video. Williams only tends to work with hip hop/r n b acts and therefore has a recognisable style throughout his videos spanning over his 20 year career. This includes frequently flicking between the artists in the song, also putting them in different locations throughout the video. As well as this, I found that he regularly uses close up shots on the performer, something which is often required on the brief from the record label as a promotional tactic. 
A video which particularly interested me was the iconic 'Vogue' video by Madonna (directed by David Fincher) (http://gliscoproductions.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/vogue-madonna-video-analysis.html). Fincher chose to portray Madonna in a sexy yet sophisticated way, also featuring famous icons from the past. The video fascinated me, not only because of its journey through The Golden Age of Hollywood, but because of it's representation of both men and women and equality though the lyrics 'it makes no difference if you're black or white, if you're a boy or a girl'. I feel that the inclusion of all 3 main political leaders for the UK, that this too shows equality. Our video relates with the audience through it's normality of just walking through London and going to the tourist attractions and therefore this shows similar traits to Madonna's 'Vogue' video.

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Question 2 - Evaluation - Lucy Clark

Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The term 'branding' means to identify a product, and we feel that our video displays significant usage of branding. We have done this through the use of masks, probably the most recognisable and memorable pieces of mise-en-scene used in the video. As well as the masks, the 'British' theme also adds to the branding of the product that is our video, as we have used props that would be associated with Britain. The importance of doing this was to capture the attention of the British audience, and familiarise other countries with our country. 

The lettering and font used in our video reflects the anarchistic behaviour that the genre portrays. The font is very similar to that used by Sex Pistols on their infamous 'Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols' album which too displayed that of rebellious behaviour, fitting alongside the genre characteristics. We chose to use this font as The Clash and Sex Pistols were from the same genre and shared similar traits in what they stood for. The font is familiar to its audience and therefore we believed it would be suitable to the audience. For example, if a teenager was looking at CD's in a shop and they were familiar with the Sex Pistols music and they saw our album cover for The Clash, even without knowing about The Clash, they would be more likely to pick up the album simply because of the font. The red and the blue colours used in the font also add to the British theme of red, white and blue which is effective in supporting the British ideology. 

We chose to do a simple design for our digipack cover and magazine advert. This is because the simplicity is often the key to gaining an audience. It stands out and is eye catching because of the colours used and the picture used, not because of a busy background. Therefore we felt that is was most appropriate to stay simple because of these reasons. The colour scheme throughout the video, digipack and magazine advert has remained realistic and continuously of a British colour-scheme, purposely done for continuity throughout. 

We began putting our ideas together in September 2011 where as a group we did various mindmaps and written timelines of our ideas. Further to this, we did a powerpoint presentation to our class which included our ideas, about our group, costume ideas, a wordle mindmap of associating words to do with the genre characteristics, an analysis of the lyrics by us, the time line, inspiring videos and a printable questionnaire in which we asked all class members to complete afterwards. The questionnaire provided us with supporting ideas from our peers and what they liked and didn't like about our ideas so far. After we had considered the ideas from our peers, we put together a storyboard of shot ideas on yellow post-it notes. We then individually photographed them and uploaded them to the mac computers and then to Final Cut Express, our editing software. We were going to make an animatic storyboard, fitting to the music so that we could clearly see how long the shots needed to be and how many more we needed to add (http://gliscoproductions.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/blog-post.html). We realised that we had vastly underestimated the volume of footage we required and spent several hours filling in the gaps, drawing more images, uploading them to the computer and adding them to the animatic storyboard. This gave us an excellent idea of how much footage we would need when it came to actual filming. We are so thankful that we did this task or we would have not realised the amount of footage we would need.

We were then aware of what we needed to film and so began to film our video footage. It took us several days and trips to London to complete as well as an evening at school to film the performance footage. It took longer than we had originally planned for because of the bad weather in November and December and only being able to do the filming on weekends because of school. We edited the footage we had gained from the weekend in the following week of school and made note of other ideas we could film. We did this for several weeks, and we eventually finished filming in the Christmas holidays. We had a deadline of January time and as a group we like to stick to deadlines and ended up being the first group to finish our music video, before the deadline date. This gave us time to reflect on our video and get audience feedback for our evaluation without rushing. 

During the editing time, Ellie G put together the digipack. She worked hard on creating ideas and re-drafting until we were all happy with the finished product. This teacup design was our first front cover draft. Our influence for this design was Arctic Monkey's 2011 album 'Suck It and See'. The album cover was a plain colour with just the album title written on it, plain but very effective. We loved the idea of doing a similar design but adding something British to it, which we chose to be a teacup. However, after the design was nearing finishing, as a group we decided against it because although the artwork worked by Arctic Monkeys, we believed that for our digipack to match the theme of our video, we needed to create a design that was more eye-catching and reflective of the albums anarchistic nature. This led to the creation of what eventually became our final digipack cover after many re-drafts (http://gliscoproductions.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/digipack). Because me and Ellie S finished the video on time, we decided to create the Magazine advert using Adobe CS4 Photoshop. We drafted the advert 3 times until we were finally happy with the product. 

Our digipack is a typical 6 square digipack that you would find in your average modern day CD. The digipack usually would be made of a card or paper outer binding, with one or two plastic trays to hold the CD. We did not opt for the use of brushes because of the simplistic idea that we held. A big inspiration for the idea of the back cover was 'The Great Bear'. Artist Simon Patterson used a tube map to group people, rather than the names of the stations. This idea was a big influence on our final back cover, sharing similar characteristics. 

After looking through magazines such as NME and Q to gain inspiration for our magazine advert, we realised the importance of including star ratings on the advert. This is one of the main features on adverts alongside the inclusion of where the music is available from and the bands web address. Therefore, it was important to include these in our advert. Our overall piece is similar to your average magazine advert for an album, consisting of the necessary information and conventions as others. This is important for the branding of not only the album, but the band too. 

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Question 3 - Evaluation - Lucy Clark

Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We made an audience profile in which we suggested the type of person that would watch our music video and the characteristics that they would have (http://gliscoproductions.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/audience-profile.html). We looked at the genre is more detail and then looked at the audience demographics for channels such as MTV Rocks, Kerrang and Scuzz TV which would most likely show our video and the viewing figures showed that on average MTV Rocks was the highest viewed channel on average in comparison to the other ones we looked at. MTV Rocks showed average daily viewing figures as being around 94,000 and 497,000 per week (http://www.barb.co.uk/).

After doing this we proceeded to create the typical stereotype that would watch these channels and more importantly, our video. We came up with a stereotype of a typical viewer of our video. The viewer is 17 years old and he attends college on a daily basis. In his spare time he enjoys listening to music from the rock/punk genre and going to gigs with his friends. He reads music magazines from the punk/rock genre such as NME and Kerrang and watches music channels such as Scuzz, MTV Rocks and Q. He also watches music programs on regular TV channels such as BBC for example ‘Never Mind The Buzzcocks’ and ‘Top of the Pops’.

As well as this, our stereotypical viewer would shop in high-street shops such as Topman and Urban Outfitters as well as some vintage shops such as Rokit.

We showed to the class what we have done so far, overall we got really good feedback. Our peers especially liked the fast paced editing of our video as they thought it matched the song really well. To add to this, our classmates said that they liked the shot of the various road signs at the end of the video. They thought it was funny, lighthearted and cheerful. The negative feedback we got was on the shot of the cars and taxis, our class thought it was too long and needed to be made shorter. We have taken this feedback on board and are now changing our video to make it better.

When we were first coming up with ideas for our music video, we looked into other videos which are set in one particular city or place and looked at how well it worked, We looked at videos such as The Smiths ‘Panic’ and Blur ‘For Tomorrow’ which are set in cities, the Blur video being in just one city and The Smith’s video in several places. The Blur video like ours shows landmarks in London such as the River Thames, Trafalgar Square and London buses and is shot entirely in black and white, giving a more traditional feel to the city. We thought that it would be a good idea to use some black and white footage in our video however, upon re-evaluating our idea, we decided against doing this as we thought it would look odd in comparison to the color footage that we would use throughout the rest of the video. These songs are also of a similar genre to our one and therefore the viewers are likely to want to watch this video because of the similarities.

By getting audience feedback throughout the process of putting together our video, we managed to alter things that our audience thought we could improve on or change. For example, one of our classmates said that the shot of the traffic that we used on the lyric “engines stop running” was too long; therefore we cut down the length of this shot as we too agreed that it was too long. Another example of how audience feedback has affected our video is the way that we used close up shots on the performance parts. Originally we filmed the footage so that the entire band was in the shot all of the time. However, we used the zoom tool on final cut to alter this after getting this feedback. By doing this we have picked out different band members to feature at different times, for example the close up of Ed Milliband playing the bass guitar. This works well because it takes away the focus from the lead singer David Cameron.

As a group we realized that upon deciding the theme of our video, which focuses on the relationships between politicians that our target audience may be expanded. It now is not only appealing to teenagers who will like the genre of music, but also to adults who have an interest in politics. The comedy side of the video too will interest people on a wider scale.  

We used the most well-known politicians of the moment to feature in our video because obviously our audience will be more likely to recognise and have some understanding of them, which again widens our audience. We also felt that because all three party leaders were featured in the video that everybody would be able relate to at least one of them as most people support one of these parties, again widening our target audience.

We portrayed the relationship between Clegg and Cameron as being that of a romantic one to add humor to our video. As well as this, we thought that because of the current coalition, it would make sense to have the two characters as being in each other’s company all of the time and despite them being from opposing parties, that they could be portrayed as having a good friendship/romantic relationship even though we know that this isn’t entirely true.

As well as this, we wanted our audience members to perhaps warm to the other politicians, which perhaps they don’t support or agree with, although it may only be for the duration of the video. It also brings a humorous side to politics, which is usually a very serious topic, which we felt was a very important message to give out. As we know, politicians tend to stand for different social classes, for example more working class people mainly support Labour whereas the wealthier, more aristocratic people generally support the Conservatives and this may be evident through our audience feedback, enabling them to relate more to the politicians.

We asked our classmates to watch our video through and write down a sentence or two summarizing what they thought of our video. At this point we are not yet completely finished our video and this will most likely reflect in our feedback.We will take this feedback on board and look at perhaps changing or adding things to our video, which have been suggested by our peers.

• Really nice shots, use color corrector to get a 'house theme'
• Captured the essence of London well
• Use the 'guardian' paper, not the Mirror.
• Close ups on performance
• Love the sequence of road signs
• Loved the fast editing, very effective
• Concept makes the video, for album cover maybe try to Photoshop a picture of Cameron
• I liked the fast cuts before the telephone boxes in the middle
• Liked the bits in bed at the beginning and the end great location use

Our video includes narrative, performance and concept, which is uncommon for a music video. Normally videos only include 2 of these and therefore this is why we chose to use all three. Originally we weren’t going to include any performance in our video however after discussing it with our teacher, he suggested that we should include a performance part of our video in order to break up the footage on London. We carefully thought out how and where we would film this part but ended up filming it outside on a last minute impulse. This was effective because the floodlight, which was attached to the brick wall, shun perfectly onto the band and instruments. However, once we had put the footage onto the editing computer, we realized that there was a regular flicker on the footage, which we could not remove. We decided to still use the footage as it was too late to re-film this part but we do feel that it isn’t entirely noticeable throughout. 

Lastly, we were lucky enough to receive some audience feedback from one of the members from The Clash itself. After posting the video on youtube and then posting the youtube link to Facebook, one of my mums friends commented saying that she was friends with Terry Chimes, the ex drummer from The Clash who infact worked on this song. She then contacted him and showed him the video. Personally, I feel that this is the best feedback we could have. It comes first hand from the person who was in the original video, and for him to say that we too did a ‘nice job on the video’ is very important. 


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Question 4 - Evalutation - Lucy Clark

Question 4 - How did you use new media technologies in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages?

After completing our exam and coursework last year, our teacher gave us a couple of tasks to get us used to lip syncing and filming music videos as it is so different to filming a film opening. For our first exercise we were given the freedom of choosing a song and filming a basic music video in small groups which must include lip-syncing. We actually found this very difficult as a class and so our teacher gave us an exercise to do as a class, with teachers help. The first task was difficult because we didn’t fully understand how much footage we would need. However, the group task was much easier because our teacher filmed with us and reminded us of how much footage we needed. We ran the song through 5 or 6 times using different shots each time, for example one was a handheld shot and this involved me holding the camera and getting up close with the person who was singing. Other shots included a long shot, a medium shot and a shot from the floor looking up at the performer. The song was Tom Jones “It’s Not Unusual” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zmk6aDvuOc) and as a group we were pleased with our overall product. This exercise helped us understand the importance of getting a variation of different shots and the volume of footage we would need. Another exercise that we did was our animatic storyboard which we did after doing our written storyboard at the beginning of year 13. In our group we are all quite bad at drawing and therefore we weren’t happy with our storyboard at all! We also uploaded a rough cut of our video to youtube after editing for several weeks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34pigPEBH3c)

For our A2 piece, we were lucky enough to have the availability of using the Sanyo HD cameras from school. Last year we found that the cameras we used were not of a good standard and believed that this contributed negatively towards our final piece. Therefore, after being given the opportunity of using the HD cameras this year, we would take full advantage of this. As well as this, we felt that last year we were not correctly taught how to use the special features that our editing software ‘Final Cut’ had to offer. However, this year we did many exercises involving practising using different effects and features and this really helped us to edit our video to how we wanted it. The tri-pod we also feel was easier to use this year, they were not as stiff and temperamental as last year and so this also helped.

Before filming, we carefully thought about where we wanted to film and also asked for other ideas from our peers. We did this by presenting the class with a power-point presentation of our ideas and then giving out questionnaires to our class and one of the questions asked for ideas on location. For example, one of our class members suggested we go to St Pauls to film and after considering the idea we believed that it would be an excellent one because of the protests that we happening there at the time. We feel that this is one of the main locations featured in our video as it adds to the political aspect of our idea. The London Eye was another idea that was suggested by one of our peers, and again we feel that from this we created a clever piece of editing that we’re proud of.

We feel that the use of camera work was of a high standard for our video. Ellie Scott, who did the majority of the filming, had a good technique and patience with the camera, always remembering to white balance the camera before using it. We think that Ellie was best for doing the camera work because she enjoys it and has a skill with it. We used a HD camera this year, which in comparison to the camera we used last year for our film introduction was a million times better. It was smaller and more compact, yet did so much more than the camera we used last year did. We were properly taught by our teacher the features of the camera too, which we were not shown last year. Therefore, we feel that the combination of the good camera and Ellie being our camera woman is one of the reasons as to why we are so pleased with the final outcome of the video. 


Personally, I am very happy with the way we have edited the video. I did the majority of the editing whilst sharing the duties with Ellie Scott. This was because I tend to have more patience with the software and Ellie is very good with ideas. Therefore, the two of us worked together to complete this. We used the software called ‘Final Cut’ which after struggling to use last year, we found to be easier this year after being taught about the shortcuts and different tools and their purposes. We used the razor tool to cut footage down to fit into the gaps of our other footage as well as using the mouse to drag footage to make it longer. We also used the marker tool which was a massive help to us. By using this we were able to cut to the beat of the music more accurately which is important for a music video. Without this tool we feel that we would have not been able to be so accurate with having the footage cut to the beat of the music, in particular the part at the end with the road signs.

During the filming of the performance part of our video we were happy with what we were gaining from it. However, after putting the footage on the editing suite and uploading it to Final Cut, we realised that unfortunately we had a slight flicker in some of the footage. Some parts were okay, and others were not so good. We realised that the flicker was not due to our filming technique but is a limitation of the shutter on the camera which could not be fixed, therefore we would not have been able to correct this. However, by this point, we decided that we did not want to re-film this part of the video because the same thing was likely to happen again. However, we did manage to get some footage without it and obviously this was the best footage. If we was to have had the time to re film it then we would have most probably changed the location and used a different light, however, this was not really possible as it was the last thing we filmed.

After learning the basics of using Final Cut last year I felt that it was easier to pick up the new techniques that our teacher taught us. Out of our group, I have the most patience with using the software because last year it was quite frustrating to use. Therefore, we decided that I would do most of the editing, which I was happy to do.

We then did a photoshoot to get a collection of potential images for our digipack and magazine advert. To do the photoshoot we used a Nikon D40 digital camera. As well as this, we used the green screen for a more basic background which would make photo-shopping the photo easier. We used filler lighting for the shoot in which a light was put on the floor so that it shined upwards towards the people we were photographing. This filler light provided illumination for the parts of the image that was slightly shadowed to give full brightness on the image.

We used Adobe CS4 Photoshop to alter the background of the images as well as add effects to them. Ellie Glickman created the digipack and Ellie Scott and I created the magazine advert. Our teacher regularly have us feedback on the images we were creating, and Ellie Glickman in particular, made several changes to the 6 digipack images throughout the time, making them better each time. Whilst doing the magazine advert, we too had some difficulties at the start with understanding how to use the program. We had not used it before and because we had been editing, we hadn’t picked up the skills that Ellie G had. Our teaching assistant Jack was more than helpful to us, and when he wasn’t there, Ellie helped us with using the tools on the program immensely. The main tool we used was the magic wand tool in which we cut out the picture we wanted to use for the advert as it was on a busy background. It took a few attempts to fully grasp the technique of the magic wand tool and once we had done this, the rest was straightforward.

We used the website ‘wordle’ to make word clouds featuring words associated with punk-rock genre and London. We used this website because it is a creative and colourful way to present our ideas to our audience (http://gliscoproductions.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/word%20cloud).

As well as this, we used youtube (web 2.0) to gain feedback from viewers on our video. After completeing around 1 minutes worth of footage and editing, we put a rough draft of our video on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34pigPEBH3c&feature=relmfu) and asked our peers for feedback. Using youtube worked in our favour as without this we would not have been able to gain feedback from ex-Clash member Terry Chimes and therefore uploading our music video to youtube was beneficial to us. Also, it’s a simple way to refer back to our video whenever we need it, for example for screen captions etc (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVsSYPm9BUU). 

also view my evaluation on: http://www.wix.com/lucyclark1994/glisco-production#!question-4