Our media products stick to the stereotypical convention of the rock genre. We have coupled the narrative with the performance aspect as rock videos usually do to get the audience to see the band’s style and to understand the plot behind the lyrics. We have followed a stereotypical mise en scene including dark, alternative clothes, guitars and drums. The locations all fit the stereotypical genre which shows the gothic side of it (The woods) and the anarchy that they portray (Red and black walls). These locations, while showing the attitudes of the band they also give a realistic feel to the video. This makes the audience question the themes in our video and they can compare it to reality. We have also used stylistic lighting in the video, first in red and grey to darken the mood of the video and then to darken the performance. A large number of camera angles are used to go with the beat of the music and to show the bands attitude in shots such as low angle shots and to show their expressions a lot of close ups are used. The large number of shots also keep the video interesting and makes the shot flow a lot smoother. Despite the unrealistic story, we have used simple cuts to make the entire video seem more life like. The only transition that was used is the fade which is used to layer the performance and to show that the girl is out cold from the drugs and everything seems to be an illusion.

Using forms and conventions

Challenging forms and conventions To challenge the stereotypical rock video we have made the

main character a female and the plot follows her more than the male lead singer, who still has a large role but is not the main focus. Doing this involves the females into the rock genre which is more modern with a lot of new female rock bands as well as new male bands. This also attracts both sexes as the audience to the video. Our video covers very sensitive issues in which some people may have never met before, while rock videos normally cover break ups, which most people have dealt with once or twice in their life. Our video covers: drink driving, depression, relationships and mental illnesses which is different to the usual rebellious plots that are used, it also looks at more serious aspects of life which most rock videos just touch upon briefly.

Effect of the products We have included the same images throughout our products,

doing this links them together as a product would in real life. We repeatedly used our red and black grimy wall in the products as it connotes the anarchy from the band and the shows off the alternative style that we were trying to create. Also we have incorporated an idea from their older album “In love and death,” the tree, as it is very famous within the band, so we felt that it should appear on the website. It also relates to the video where the car crashes into the tree and kills the lead singer. Another big feature is the artwork used by Alex Pardee who does all of the art for The Used, so we have tried to do this our self which again make our products seem realistic. I believe that the style of the products, all linking, makes them work very well in selling the band and portraying their attitudes and values.

Audience feedback To get audience feedback, we posted our video on

YouTube to collect as many comments as possible. We also made a poll on the blog to see how people rate it.

I am very pleased we have had about the feedback, one man from YouTube has said he liked it and said well done with the green screen, he also gave us a suggestion on how to make it better next time. The poll we set up is also very pleasing, mostly 5 stars. The feedback we have had tells us that we chose to do the right style and it turned out to be very good.

Technology used Research:

The internet – To gather knowledge and pull ideas together to see what we can do and how other companies create videos in a similar style.

Television – I watched a large amount of music videos on channels such as Scuzz and Kerrang to make sure our idea definitely fit the rock genre, the style of the actual channel also helped us to decide certain parts of the DVD cover and the website.

Music DVD – As we had to create a DVD cover for the band we decided to have a look at a few of them so we knew what to include in ours.

Planning:

Filming and photos – We decided to go out and take some shots of the locations we will be using, one example is the forest, where we had to find a dark part of the woods, but it had to have a flat floor to run along. We also digitally recorded our props to have a better look at what the shot would look like before we did it.

Storyboard – We created a detailed storyboard to make it easy to visualize the shots and directing when it came to filming. It also made it possible to see if there was any shots that we could not achieve or that we had to change and rearrange.

Construction:

Video camera - We used a Sony video camera throughout the entire shoot which was provided to us by the school.

Green screen – As we had to create a dream world, we had to fake many of the shots, and to do this we used a green screen to then add our new background into the shot.

Photoshop – This was used to create the fake backgrounds for the dream world.

Adobe Premier – This was our editing software that we used at school and at home. Evaluation:

Blog – We used the blog to create a poll which would tell us what people though of our video, the poll is from 1 star to 5 starts.

PowerPoint – I used PowerPoint to gather my information and feedback to find out the outcome of our video.

Internet – This was YouTube, where we posted the video and waited for comments and ratings to see what people thought of the video.

Experience From working with my group for the last year I have learnt a lot about

creating a media production. Working with a group has helped to develop my communication and as we developed this, our project became easier to do. While planning I have became more aware of how useful blogs are to gather ideas together and understand what we need to do to create a good production. I have learnt a lot from filming our production, mostly about the use of green screen and framing the shots. We had a few problems with using the green screen such as trying to prevent the shadows being casted on it and trying to fit the entire band into a small area. Finally editing has taught me to play around with everything while editing as I believe that it has made our video more effective after finding better effects for it.

This has been both a stressful but joyful experience where we hit problems and greatly overcome them with even better solutions than what we thought. I believe our final piece is very well made for the time and budget we had, it also is very effective to fit the right target audience.