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

Untitled from Ollie Sandles on Vimeo.

Evaluation Question 2: How effective was the combination of your main product and ancillary task?

For our Media Product to be a success and something that we could market, we had to make sure that our music video and ancillary task related to each other and as a whole created a strong product.

After establishing audience needs in terms of genre, we created a music video that fit into the category of heavy rock. We illustrated this through the 4 micro features, mise-en-scene, and cinematography, sound and editing. Through the mise-en-scene we used costume to relate to our target audience. Clothing is a big part of any genre; a genre connotes a certain style so we used clothing and colour to meet a big audience need, we did this by using a lot of dark colours on the clothing including leather jackets, hoodies and skinny jeans.

Themes that ran through the music video were of rebelliousness, anarchy and being against society. We didn’t want to insult our audience by putting across the message that these themes were wrong, we were supporting them in many ways by showing our protagonist doing these things in the first place. We didn’t end the video with a message of ‘Obey by the rules’, we ended it with the audience deciding what happens next. Ricky clearly has his independence in the video as he walks off into the sunset alone, and our target audience won’t take from the video that they should rebel; it’s more a message about independence which is what the audience of this genre wants.

As the message of our video connoted being against the paradigm that is society, we used breaking the law as a constant theme throughout our video, and so we used it on our ancillary task.

We didn’t want to take just a still image from the video for our digipack and magazine advert, we took a picture that wasn’t related to our video but wasn’t in it. We took pictures of our protagonist doing graffiti which is against the law, so this relates to shoplifting, which was in our video. For the Digipack we used the picture of Ricky doing graffiti as the front cover and we edited it so that he was writing the band name and song title. The magazine cover was a close up of the spray can from a different angle with the information this time printed on the can. At the bottom of each part of the digipack is the record company ‘RoadRunner Records’. We thought this was an appropriate institution as all of the bands on the label are of a alternative/metal/rock genre and the audience of the bands on the label already fall under our target audience as well. The combination of our video and ancillary task would appeal to ‘RoadRunner’ because of the constant themes throughout both that are relevant to each other and to the genre. Overall the combination of our Music video and ancillary task was very effective down to the overall theme running through both.

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After we had completed the main product (music video), we thought it would be necessary to receive audience feedback to ensure that the text would be a success amongst its target audience. In order to do this, we posted the video on the the evolving social networking website, Facebook. This allowed our target audience to comment on the video, and express their personal opinion of it. Here are some quotations demonstrating the feedback that we have received and a screen shot of our video on Facebook:

>'Overall i really liked the music video, i think the story really followed the lyrics of the song and they both fitted really well together, i particularly liked the band shots. the use of costumes and setting were appropriate for the song. the transitions between the band and the rest of the video worked really well i thought and kept you interested during the video. the content of the video was appropriate for my age group and was thought provoking.'

>'The video shows an excellent visual presentation to accompany the theme of the song'

>'I love the underlying thematic representation of rebelliousness reflected by the grittiness and quick cuts of the shots which impairs the clarity to the audience. the playful interchanging colour saturations kept me visually stimulated and satisfied my needs as the audience.'

>'I liked:

The various different camera angles used.

The effects used.

The locations used'

>'A really good music video. You can really see the emotion of the character through the imagery of the video and the lyrics in the song.'

I felt this was posistive feedback, which suggests that we met the needs of our target audience through our music video. Our feedback suggested that we strongly matched the theme and lyrics of the song to the video, which was our intention as we felt it the two would make a strong overall product and our feedback suggested this was the case. Comments about strong micro features such as mise-en-scene in the form of costumes and editing for instance transisitions were also encouraging. From our audience feedback I feel that we have met the needs of our target audience throught our media product due to the video fitting in with the theme and lyrics of the song.

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

Untitled from Ollie Sandles on Vimeo.

Evaluation Question 1 Update

Using the information I blogged a few weeks ago we wrote a script and turned our answer into a video. We downloaded music videos of the same genre and spliced clips of them in with out own footage to show how we used, developed and challanged the conventions of real media prodcuts. We are very pleased with the outcome and will upload the video tomorrow.

Evaluation Question 3 & 4

For evaluation question 3 & 4 Charlie, Ollie and I have written a script so that we can use different forms of medium to evaluate our product. We will be doing a commentary over our video as well for question 1. For question 4 we will film ourselves evaluating our video using clips of real media products to strenghten our points.

Final Video

Ollie uploaded the video to Vimeo so now its available to view.


Skid Row/ 18 and Life - Music Video from Ollie Sandles on Vimeo.

We've been banned Worldwide. Oops.

We tried to upload our Music Video to Youtube, but we were not allowed as our video contained a song that was copyrighted, so it has been banned.

Ancillary Task

Our Digi-Pack (CD) and Magazine advertisment/Poster for our Media product.

Digi-Pack



Poster/Magazine Advert

Photo Shoot for Ancillary Task

For our Ancillary Task, including a Digipack and Magazine Advert, we wanted to make sure that the images related to the orginal text and our video. So we were deciding on an idea to do with anarchy and youth acting out. So we decided to take pictures of Ricky spray painting graffiti on a public wall. We once again used our actor for the pictures and we took multiple shots from multiple angles so we could use them for the whole cd and magazine advert.

Like this cd cover we decided to the have the image drawn on in the foreground and the brick wall in the background.

Editing Finished and Project Review

After Ollie, Charlie and I had finished all of the editing we had completed our music video for 18 and Life. Overall we were pleased with the outcome as we had all put in a lot of work and had to give up a lot of time to film some of the shots, especially the band location shots. We had a very good and reliable actor so we were very fortunate to have that resource. I feel we worked well as a team and each member of the group played a huge part in creating the final product.

Final Film Session Ever (Guitar Studio Shots)

Having edited all of our footage we still had a few gaps to fill, we did however have lots of ideas that we hadn't used to fill the gap. We had already filmed me as the singer in the photography studio having been inspired by the orginal 18 and Life video, so we decided to film some guitar shots in there as well. The footage we came out with was very strong and we felt we could do a lot of editing with it.

Final Footage of Ricky

We finally came to the day when we had our final shot with our protagonist. To fill the gaps in our music video timeline, but also to stick to our original idea of having Ricky arguing with his mum to show that he is 'no good at home' as mentioned in the lyrics. We were however unable to get a mother figure to be in our video. We always had the idea of using subtitles in the scene to show the dialogue between Ricky and his mum. This led us to come up with the idea of filming Ricky going into a telephone box to ring his mum and we subtitle what Ricky is saying to her, to illustrate how they don't get on. The subtitle idea was inspired by the Green Day music video 'Jesus of Suburbia'.

We went to shoot in the centre of Walden, we wanted to get some high angle shots, so me and Ollie took the lift in a shop next to the telephone box to the 3rd storey so we could film Ricky walking inside. We wanted to get a range of different angles so we could do some interesting, fast cuts with the Ricky footage and the studio shots.

Record Label Change

We feel that an appropriate record label to release our product under would be 'Roadrunner Records'. This is because Roadrunner Records concern themselves with signing heavy rock bands, and would be supportive and respectful of the genre conventions within our music video and ancillary tasks. It would also  attract the audience as they may be aware of the record label, and if not the product would gain recognition for the label. Similar artists signed to this label consist of Kiss, Ratt and ex Guns n Roses guitarist, Slash.


After our orginal research we decided to use Warner Brothers Records becuase the some of the artists signed to that label were of the same genre as Skid Row. After some research through music magazines such as Kerrang!, we changed labels to RoadRunner. This was becuase this label is soley of the heavy rock genre which we thought would be a good reflection of the Skid Rows music and image and our target audience would be fans of other bands on Roadrunner records.

Returning to film Ricky Shoplifting

At 8pm Ollie and our Actor returned to Costcutter to film the shoplifting scene. Even though we wern't allowed to film earlier in the day we had preped some shots. We took inspiration from the Green Day video 'Jesus of Suburbia' where the protagonist is shoplifting in a supermarket and there is a long shot from one end of the supermarket isle filming the protagonist walking across the other end, we used this as the scenes establishing shot in our video as it looked good and shows the audience where Ricky is. The Costcutter scene went in our video at the start of the second verse, this was done to represent a new chapter and new location in Rickys day. The previous scene was of studio shots so the lighting was quite dim compared to Costcutter which was very light so the contrast work well as it was a new verse in the song and a new 'chapter' in the video.

Ricky Shots

We had been discussing the idea for doing a shoot where Ricky steals something from the beginning. We thought this would be a good way to denote that he is an outlaw and doesn't care about society. We went into Costcutter having previously arranged to film the shoplifting scene there, however, we were told we had to come back several hours later to do it. As we had all of the equiment and the actor we decided to film a scene where Ricky was drinkign vodka as the very end scene of our video is where Ricky throws a bottle of vodka on the floor so it would make sense to see him drinking it in an earlier scene. It was dark when we were filming so some of the shots were a bit grainy but still were good. We were filming next to a church and saw a poster saying 'What has God ever done for me?'. We filmed this as many bands associated with the genre of alternative/punk reference religeon in their lyrics and videos such as Green Day and Good Charlotte so we filmed this. We thought this would also show the audience that Ricky doesn't care about society or values so the question on the poster could be represented as Rickys thoughts. We showed this by panning to Ricky after filming the poster.

Studio Shots

Charlie was able to get us time in the photography studio to do some vocal studio shots, we wanted to do it in a location like this because we could control the cinematography and would make it look more professional. Also we were inspired by the orginal 18 and Life video in which the members of the band individually were filmed in a studio. We did a lot of takes of me doing the vocals, from different angles and with different lighting. For clothing I wore the same outfit that I did for the whole band shots. These filming sessions went well and we came out of them with good material which would fit into our video.

Uploading footage

We uploaded all of our current footage and started editing. We so far had the very first scene we shot of Ricky having a fight with the person in the car, the very end shot of him walking down a hill and throwing his vodka bottle on the floor, the workshop clips showing Ricky walking out of his job and now the band shots. We were deciding we're to put certain clips to match the audio and we were doing well. After we finished putting clips in we still had a lot of gaps so we decided we needed more shots. We decided what extra scenes we would film by using the same themes we had for the previous shots and our overall narrative. We came up with:

- Studio vocal shots
- Shots of Ricky arguing with his mum
- Shots of Ricky drinking
- Shots of Ricky stealing something

We decided the vocal shots as we had already done narrative and band shots so adding more shots to do with performance would fit in well. We came up with the Ricky narrative shots through the lyrics.

Band Location.

For the location of our band shots Ollie found a good location in Sewards End. The location was an abandoned barn in a field, the barn was made of rusty metal and had been overgrown with weeds and thorns. There was not much light but enough to get the shots we needed and the lack of lig baand colour worked well with the look we were going for. We carried all of the instuments and recording equipment to the barn set up and shot. It was a difficult location to get to and to work with but it was worth it as the shots we came out with were very strong. We had a band consisting of 3 members with me as the singer and bassist, richard as the guitarist and will as the drummer. We set up the equpiment in a typical badn formation, drums at the back and guitars at the front. We got a wide variety of shots and had a good filming session.