Fellow

Blake Blackburn
A2 Media Evaluation
First Off
Firstly we organized ourselves into groups, my group
consisted of myself, Daniel Collinson, Ashley Hartley
and James Hamill.

We were then tasked to create a promotional feature,

this included either; a music video, a film teaser trailer,
or a television soap opera promotion. Me and my
group chose to create a music video.
The Music
 Our first priority was finding a suitable track that we could all agree
on, this however was not as straight forward as it may sound and
took longer than expected. We eventually found a track we could all
agree on from the website: http://www.jamendo.com/

 the song we picked: “Discount Store” by Dan Bryke. We agreed on

this track due to the fact we all would rather a music video with a
narrative behind it and found that the concept of a discount store
would make an easy basis to work on (especially seeing as James
Hamill has experience in this field). We then worked on creating a

brand image; Fellow fun but mellow.

In What ways does your Media product, use, develop
or challenge forms and conventions of real media
Products?
The main way in which we challenged the typical
media conventions was mainly focusing on the video’s
narrative rather than seemingly endless performance
shots (which in my opinion make videos boring and
repetitive).

However this said we still incorporated some

performance shots. However we did stick to many
typical conventions fitting to our genre, of rock pop.
For example we fit in many images of guitars
throughout the piece
In What ways does your Media product, use, develop
or challenge forms and conventions of real media
Products?
In What ways does your Media product, use, develop
or challenge forms and conventions of real media
Products?
Intertextuality
- During our ancillary tasks Daniel Collinson had the
idea to reference The Beetles with our Album Cover:

Fellow The Beetles

 In What ways does your Media product, use, develop
or challenge forms and conventions of real media
Products?
We also used a variety of different and interesting
shots to keep things fresh and different.

Transitions such as these are

scarcely used during music videos,
however we felt it fitted our style
whilst being also interesting and
different.

During a survey of ten people, three

people specifically commented on the
clever use of editing in this shot, by
using a still image and simply a camera
being held up high, we were able to
create a convincing CCTV camera look
via final cut express.
 How effective is the combination of your main
products and ancillary texts?

Our ancillary task reflect our brand image of fun but

mellow, calm and easy going pop rock music, aimed at
an audience mixed gender teenagers of a varied socio-
economic status.
 We chose a brand logo of simply the band’s name
‘Fellow’: Fellow
We stuck to this specific font through out our various
tasks.
 How effective is the combination of your main
products and ancillary texts?

We also stuck to a specific colouring technique,

created using Photoshop.
This aesthetic helped to
enforce the laid back image
we were presenting.
The black and white photos
with a hint of cartoony
effects, also with bright
text over the top, showingThis effect was created by removing all
colour and desiderating the images (also
our image’s fun side. adding various filters to enhance the
cartoony effect). These steps were to be
repeated several times whilst producing
our ancillary tasks
 How effective is the combination of your main
products and ancillary texts?

This idea of fun but mellow portrayed within our

ancillary tasks was also shown during our video in
three main areas:

1. The protagonist’s general attitude.

2. His dealing with customers.
3. The manager shouting – protagonist not
caring/walking out.
How effective is the combination of your main
products and ancillary texts?

Black and White mellow imagery.

Artists wearing casual

clothing as usual, (note during
the performance, although the
protagonist is wearing a shirt
and name tag, he is still
‘scruffy’ looking and wearing
jeans).
Bright contrasting text
showing the group’s fun side
(And Logo).
What have you learned from the audience feedback?
What have you learned from the audience feedback?
What have you learned from the audience feedback?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReuyDUyePGs
The above link is to the YouTube video of our video being screened to our media class
and their responses.

By the usage of our questionnaires and by screening our video to a live audience/filming
their feedback we were able to find out that:
 Our video does appeal to our target audience.
 Our usage of shots does keep the video fresh and interesting.
 Angles such as the CCTV shot, the double screen guitar shot and the orange juice shot
were the most popular and interesting shots picked out by those whom viewed the piece.
 The narrative of the video is easy to understand and an enjoyable, different feature.

A few negative things that were often pointed out were:

 The Acting and occasional lip syncing fault (due to actor miming rather than singing in
some cases)
 Not enough performance shots, several people suggested that to improve the video, more
performance shots should have been used and perhaps less narrative.
 Use of creative Technologies – Skills you have
learned
During the development of this task a variety of different technologies were used throughout different
stages of creation:

 Final Cut Express

 Adobe Photoshop
 Apple Macs
 Digital hand held video cameras
 Digital Still cameras
 Dreamweaver

Websites used:
www.blogger.com
www.youtube.com
www.imageshack.us
www.photobucket.com
www.scribd.com
www.hotmail.com (SkyDrive)
www.jamendo.com
 Use of creative Technologies – Skills you have
learned

Final Cut Express

Without doubt the technology which had the largest impact on our product. I personally
did the large majority of the video’s editing, though I had never used the programme Final
Cut Express before, I found it relatively simple to learn and easy to use. By using this
programme, rather than other editing software such as Imovie or Windows Movie Maker,
we were able to create a wide variation of effects, for example the green screened CCTV
shot and the double guitar performance shot. It was also easy to edit with the
bloom/colour variations, making the video look generally ‘brighter’ and more ‘fun’. Also
due to Final Cut Express, lip syncing was not as great a problem as it would have been if
using either of the other editing software, previously mentioned , it was straight forward
to lock a clip’s sound/video thus enabling it’s user to effectively cut/move shots without
effecting the video’s lip synching (which I have found to be a problem in the past).

However, using Final Cut Express did cause some problems, first and foremost the fact
that the software is only available on Apple Macs, this meant that we could only edit
during college/lesson time. One final problem faced when using Final Cut Express was
simply the time it often took to render videos.
 Use of creative Technologies – Skills you have
learned

Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop was used throughout the development of our
Ancillary tasks. I personally already had a lot of experience with
Photoshop and therefore found nothing challenging about its usage.
However much of the photoshoped work was a combination of
mine and Daniel Collinson’s efforts, who was eager to learn how to
use this programme. Photoshop made it incredibly easy to work on
our brand image, developing a logo and creating a re-occurring
style/aesthetic.

However due to using this programme on an Apple Mac for the first
time, I often found it difficult and frustrating to do certain tasks,
which on a PC I was more than comfortable doing so, this difficulty
was due to the easy usage of hotkeys and basic layout changes.
 Use of creative Technologies – Skills you have
learned

Apple Macs
I found the benefits of using an Apple Mac very few indeed.
The only redeeming feature of which was the exclusive
software available to Macs, Final Cut Express. Other than this
Apple Macs tended to make even the simplest of tasks
awkward, difficult and often frustrating. Whether it be the
changing/removal of well known windows hotkeys or the
simple annoyance caused by oversensitive right mouse button,
that lead to the screen randomly moving around when you did
not intend to press anything at all and often right clicking when
you meant to left click. Apple Macs seem to be a complete un-
necessary piece of equipment that would have been simpler,
faster and more effective if simply the programme Final Cut
Express was available/used on a PC.

...Windows 7 was MY idea, and a damned good one at that.

 Use of creative Technologies – Skills you have
learned

Hand Held Digital Cameras

It goes without saying that without the usage of these cameras,
it would not have been possible to make a video, of any kind.
However the cameras supplied by college had many faults,
most annoyingly of which being the terrible and unreliable
batteries. On several occasions we found that although the
camera at first stated it had been fully charged, that within
five minutes, the battery had completely ran out of power,
hindering our ability get any filming at all done. The most
notable occurrence of this being when filming the opening
sequence, we were on location and thus unable to replace the
battery once it died, which inevitably, as if on cue it did, just
after approximately five minutes of footage had been filmed.
 Conclusion

In conclusion I believe that both personally and as a group we all

achieved our goals and ended up with a final product of good standards,
which challenges the conventions of current media products, whilst
sticking to the basic rules that makes a music video a music video.

My personal contributions to this project included,

planning/storyboarding, filming/framing the vast majority of shots, the
vast majority of editing was also my working and I also contributed
working on the ancillary tasks including the album covers and the
magazine advert, however I perhaps did not contribute as much to the
ancillary tasks as perhaps I had hoped, due to me mainly focusing on the
editing of the video.

If I was to re do this project the main changes I would do was, to firstly

change several pieces of technology; Apple Macs and the cameras
mostly. Secondly we had problems with the planning of this video, firstly
we were going to film within Tesco but they decided at the last second
this would not be possible and as a result of this we had change locations
(and various aspects of planning) over three times.