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Joe Robinson Media advanced Portfolio Evaluation: For my advanced Portfolio in Media Unit G324 coursework, I will be producing a music video, along with a digipak cover containing the video, and a magazine advertisement, advertising the digipak. My music video is of the song ‘Danger Line’ by Avenged Sevenfold. The song despite being by a Metal band, isn’t characteristically heavy or fast. It still retains however some of the features seen in metal songs.

When making my video, I used other metal videos as reference. I used ‘One’ by Metallica, and ‘Hangar 18’ by Megadeth. ‘One’ is a long video, which was the first Metallica made. The main point wich i can draw from this video is the intertextual references and integration of other forms of media, in the shape of video clips from the film 'Johnny got his Gun' These are coupled with quotes from the movie to make the song almost feel 'associated' with it.The film is about a man seriously injured in the war and the empty life he leads in his hospital bed.A few noteworthy things about the video are the fact that aside from the clips from the film, the whole video is performance only, which is a convention for music videos of the time - the 1980's. The performance in the video is in Black and White, which is synonymous with the 40's and when the film was set. Only certain clips from the film are in colour. The room theyre performing in is also very empty, which related to the song, which describes the empty life of an injured soldier, while Megadeth’s Hangar 18 I chose to analyse this video for two main resons, the interlude of about 50 seconds to which there isnt any music. It's also the genre in which i want to make a video for.The theme of the video is mainly narrative, and the story is mainly about how the American army made a mess of keeping the UFO landing near Roswell in 1947 a secret. The video however, is not narrative. besides having the interlude at the beginning, there is no real continuation of the story set up. the rest of the video is performance based, like with the 'One' video. These were released at the same time, and have the same genre of heavy thrash metal, but have very different purposes and backstories.I think that, while having a real story as its main inspiration, its more fantastical than the other videos im analysing.the other thing though that i like about the video is the use of the shaky camera effects and slow motion. This is done to add mystery These videos contain many specifics of the Metal genre between them, such as heavy narrative focus, darkened atmospheres and stereotypic performers and characters ( the metal stereotype wearing dark clothes and having a distinctly ‘dirty’ look. Hair is often long and unkept). After using these videos as a reference I tried to make the Mise-en-scene match that of those. Scenes such as in the house were shot in lowlight and outside shots were filmed at night. This created the illusion of things looking darker than they are, which contributes to the overall appeal of the video to Metal music listeners. I have also tried to follow suit as far as the performer(s) go. The performer I chose has a particular interest in metal music and so looked the part for the video – long unkept hair and black coloured clothes. The characters involved in the narrative I made to be symbolic of the modern middle class, which I think I succeeded in. They show the typical features of middle class people in modern society which include their common branded clothing and hairstyles. The setting in which the narrative is set enhances the narrative Ideologies of Metal music by being dark, isolated and depressing in places but normal and regular in others. Particularly the field shots, which show the character running down a pathway across what can only be described as a bleak open area of land – this plays with the emotions of the watcher and works to ‘depress’ them as other metal videos do. After also researching the narrative structure of other metal videos, I found the narrative often had recurring themes such as death, addiction, depression and personal problems. They made use of a linear structure of cause and effect in order to maximise the focus on content and help it to be easier to understand. I also chose to follow this structure but put in things like flashbacks and quick repeated clips. This emphasised said clips and the section of the video’s plot that they represented. The plot follows the struggle and downfall of a man who having recently lost his son (the performer), begins to fall out with life and decides enough is enough. This in many ways represents what metal music is about in terms of theme and plot line. I also chose the climax point to be a railway line, which coincides with the song name ‘Danger Line’. I think that the combination on my music video and ancillary texts is a good one, as they share the same Metal – enhancing imagery and gloomy colour scheme. My audience thinks that overall, the combination of my digipak and advertisement works well as a promotional campaign, is eye-catching and represents Metal well. I created a questionnaire to ask a group of people about my ancillary texts, providing a series of questions related to the texts and asking things like : - How well do the magazine and advertisement represent metal music? – average score received was 7.8/10 I’m happy that I received this score because I have tried to use many conventions of metal music in order to represent it well. The group commented particularly on the font and colour choice and how they represented metal well, which pleases me. - How Eye catching are the texts? – average score received was 8.1/10 I believe I can improve substantially here. It was commented that the dark colours, while expressing metal music, failed to draw much attention to the magazine. This disappoints me in the sense that to make the advertisement more interesting, It’d have to lose the conventions of metal music I’ve worked so hard to achieve. - How Legible and readable is the type on the texts? – average score received was 7.8/10 Once again, I’m pleased by the fact people find the fonts easy to read. I like the font a lot and think it’s a great signifier of metal music. The font extravaganza which I used has many good features which include how the font has been eroded slightly, the serif style of font which makes it look more gothic and metal-like,the skull and crossbones symbol which is included in the font. It’s also important to make sure the font is readable to ensure the audience know what they’re buying, which I accomplished. Someone commented however that the font can be misleading, which Is - How well do they work as a promotional campaign? – average score received was 8.7/10 This also pleases me, as the idea of creating the two texts is for them to work well together to promote a product – my video. The average age of the people I asked was 18 – some were 17. I think I could improve by gathering answers from a wider variety of ages of people, as the group I asked was a closed group. While researching existing digipaks and magazines I found a number of conventions shared by digipaks by artists nowadays. These included Pictures and backgrounds which scaled multiple faces of the digipak, and a numbered tracklist on the back face. These general conventions are found on most digipaks found today, and help to create continuity and familiarity with the consumer. These are vital factors and it’s crucial that the design of the digipak remains consistent. Other conventions I found specific to digipaks by metal artists which I studied – (Death Magnetic by Metallica for instance) include the use of dark colours such as black, grey, indigo and brown. This enforces the ideology of the Metal genre which generally uses dark colours. The cover imagery often has nothing to do with any of the tracks on the album, and adopts a new theme, while sticking to the conventions of the genre. I tried to follow this by making the cover imagery of street scene at night time, which I edited with Adobe Photoshop to be posterised, reducing the amount of shades on the picture and taking the realistic edge from it. I got this idea from research - the Arctic Monkeys album ‘Favourite worst Nightmare’ and how it uses a real street scene and turns it into almost what looks like a ‘dream world’. This made links to my video with regards to location and time of day, as well as the fact that the performer isn’t performing in the real world, but more in a memory or fantasy. I also followed suit in terms of colour, using the same set of Indigo shades. One other thing I included was a shadow in the corners of the picture, which adds to the gloomy effect and gives a voyeuristic touch to the digipak and magazine advertisement. I experimented with Fonts and font colours until I found one called Extravaganza, which looks slightly gothic and eroded, as well as having a symbol that looks like a skull and crossbones. I think this font worked better than the 3 others I tried. I made this white to contrast the darker background and Included the symbol to reinforce the ‘death’ theme, before placing the name ‘The Returning’ and album title ‘Domestic Uncertainty’. I then added a tracklist to the back cover and placed the title on the spine, along with my record company. This is another convention I found within Metal albums – Record companies placing their name quite prominently on the digipak. For my Magazine Advertisement I first looked at other Advertisements and found that the conventions include the band and album name, as well as imagery similar to the digipak It’s trying to advertise. This is for continuity and to make sure the customer can relate the two texts through means such as colour, appearance or theme. I followed this by using exactly the same image for both my front cover of the digipak and my magazine advertisement, except I cropped the image for the magazine and chose the main focal point; the street light, to be the centre of attention. I also made the text on the advert, which I used the same font for as I did on my digipak (for continuity) a bright white colour. I did this to not only combine with the bright colours already on the image, but to contrast with the background, making it stand out as much as possible. The secondary text is product of more research into conventions of magazine advertisements. I found after studying an example by R.E.M, that magazine adverts often include other information which is generally regarding the new album, or a tour/tour dates. Using this convention, I added a secondary line of text to advertise my digipak as ‘a two disc special edition’. I coloured this text a light grey colour, darker than the primary line, to not take the emphasis off the primary line, but still maintain the attention due to the contrast with the background. Metal is a very wide genre with many sub genres. The music is often very heavy, fast and thrashy. This has a major influence on the music videos which accompany songs in this genre, as in a music video, it can dictate the pace of the editing. The narrative is often a major feature of metal videos, as a strong meaning can often be picked up by listening to the lyrics, of which have many recurring themes seen primarily in the metal genre. The quality of song in metal is much better, and generally isn’t produced by a large corporation with only money in mind, which can be said for most of today’s pop.Themes often seen in metal videos include politics and government (such as what are seen in videos by Megadeth in particular), death, torture and suffering, aswell as addiction and mental breakdowns. While not being particularly diverse in content or subject, narratives often don't follow Todorov's diagram of equilibrium > Disruption > solution > re-equilibrium. Narratives often feel open ended, which could be said about a lot of different types of genre. Endings aren’t always ‘Cindarella’ style ending like with most types of genre. This lack of positivity is another thing that the lives of the metal band members have influenced.These themes are all quite negative, and this reflects the style and lives of such metal bands. they have a very strong stereotype derived from the original punk rock architype, which has since branched off into many different tangents.The videos themselves do one of two things: they either feature the artist for the majority of the video perofrming, or focus more on narrative with only a few shots showing the band. Regardless of which the video does, there are certain key features which they have which 'classify' them as metal.Firstly, they incorporate fast cut editing to the beat of the song. this high pace fits in with the high speed music to give a high tempo feel to the video.Because of this, effects like fading and dissolving are seldom seen, as they tend to accompany the more melodic tracks which have a slower pace. From the metal videos I've researched, the lighting of the videos is always dingy and lowlight. This enhances the dark feel of the songs and contributes to the 'metalhead' image. The performers also have the same costumes and hair styles. The long unkept hair is a tradition with metal bands. Their clothes also often follow the dark theme and are all black. This is more often seen in the newer metal videos. In the old ones however, costumes looked very grungy; faded jeans and light tops.Generally clothes are in poor condition with rips and tears, which signifies the rebellious nature of the band members of the metal bands. Their hair was often untreated, whilst many new bands tend to dye their hair.I think this is a good indicator of how the metal subculture has evolved alongside the goth and new punk stereotype. Once I’d completed my research I began producing my video. I began by creating a storyboard. This storyboard contained a crudely drawn picture of the mise-en-scene for the particular scene, along with the shot length and a brief description of the shot. This helped me get an idea of what the shots would look like. Using this I created a shooting script, which detailed every single shot, the timings at which they would be used, the location, characters and the Mise-en-scene. I then arranged my main actor and shot some scenes, using a Canon ME205 MiniDvD video camera. These shots took place at night time, and saw the actor sat alone at a table, drinking and ripping up photos. I thought it was important to make the lighting as dim as possible in these scenes as low light signifies depression as well as the actions mentioned being possible outcomes of depression. The actor wore mostly regular clothing – Top, Jeans, Jacket and trainers, which would communicate that he is a regular person. This breaks the convention of being a ‘metalhead’ despite representing social class. I recorded shots multiple times in order to make sure I captured the shot perfectly. Once I had finished recording I used Matrox Mediatools on a PC to capture the footage onto the PC, where I began to edit it. The program I used was Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5, and I firstly used it to import the audio track. I then began cutting down and placing the clips I had filmed. Using Adobe Premiere Pro, I could create a timeline of clips in chronological order The shots of the performance of the guitarist were filmed inside college, in the special green room. This will allow the background of the shots to be changed and tweaked, which I will explain later. The performer himself however, wore all black and had long dark hair – the typical metal stereotype. I think everything about his appearance makes the viewer think of heavy rock and metal music, even down to the Download Festival Wristband he has on, which is visible mainly towards the end of the video. (Download festival is a significant symbol of the genre of music.) I recorded the performer playing the same 3 riffs from multiple angles, multiple different distances away. This allows me to incorporate shot variety as well as keeping the viewer intrigued by swapping from angle to angle. This fast cutting transition I made sure was kept synchronised to the beat of the song. This altogether makes the video more watchable and makes the video seem more part of the song. I then went to a railway footbridge to film some more shots, including one of an oncoming and passing train. I filmed the walk/run upto and beneath the bridge, as point of view shots. This was done without a tripod to increase the belief of a point of view shot. I also did this to make sure I had a variety of shot types in my video, from close-up to Medium to long shots. I used the Adobe Program to speed up these point of view clips to make it look like the character is running - A sign of desperation. I also incorporated the ‘chroma Key’ effect, which allowed me to change the background of the shots which I filmed in the green room. I used this to my benefit, as it allowed me to create a ‘dream’ effect with the performance (part of my narrative). In the end, I chose a sky blue colour to go behind the video, although I could’ve used video or ay kind of other imagery. When I had completed my video, I placed a cover clip at the front, describing my name, candidate number etc. and rendered it. This produced an AVI file which was 777MB in size, too large to upload to blogger – so I encoded The file using Adobe’s built in encoder. I then used Adobe Encore to burn this smaller file onto a DVD disc. To present my research and finished products, I created a Blog, using Blogger.co.uk Blogger.co.uk is a great website which allows me to present my work in the form of posts, which show progression and a running order of work I have done. Blogger also allows me to gather more audience feedback, by posting Polls, which visitors to the website can fill in. I asked a series of questions using these polls to determine the demographics of the audience I received. I asked the gender of the audience, and received 33% Female and 66% male viewers. I also asked which genre of music people like the most. To this question, I received mixed answers, although the pop and Hip hop genre received the most votes. This surprised me, as because my video is a metal video, I would’ve liked to get an audience more of the metal following. I also asked a series of questions relating to my video, such as how the characters are represented, as well as how the video portrays the metal genre. Both of these questions received massive positive feedback, with everyone who answered putting yes. Blogger also allowed me to upload pictures and video, so I could show my progress and the pictures etc. that I would use on my ancillary texts. When making my ancillary texts, I used Adobe photoshop CS3, and this allowed me to layer multiple images as well as add effects like posterize to my texts like I mentioned earlier. There were many good things about my project, but also many bad things. Firstly, I think my final music video is very professional looking and follows the trends, codes and conventions of metal music videos like the ones I researched. I’m also happy about how my ancillary texts turned out. Like the audience feedback states, they represent the genre well, and are eye catching enough to be noticed. However I also feel I could’ve done more to improve the quality of my work. Firstly, In didn’t make an animatic, which is like a slideshow of my storyboards with the track in the background. This gives as general feel of what the video will look like and allows you to get an idea of the timings of the shots etc. I would’ve done this by importing my storyboard pictures into Windows Movie maker and cropping and extending them as needed. I also could’ve done to reshoot some footage with the main protagonists, as some of the shots such as the ones where he is running down the street are too dark and he is difficult to make out at times. The other thing which gripes me is that I didn’t include a variety of different shot transitions. Overall however I am happy with the work I have produced am pleased that the audience who watched my video and saw my ancillary texts agreed with me.

Development stage 3

I used these images of my magazine advertisement and Digipak to produce a questionnaire, asking 7 qestions with regards to my ancillary texts.

I asked the following:
How representative of 'Metal' music is my digipak/advertisement?
The average score : 7.8/10
Added comment : Good font and colour choie to express 'metal'ness'

How Legible/Readable is the text?
The average score : 8.1/10
Added comment : Good size to read, but font can be misleading.

How eye catching are the digipak and advertisement?
The average score : 7.8/10
Added coment : Abstract imagery used is familiar to the audience

How well do the two products combine as a promotional campaign?
The average score : 8.7/10
Added comment : Both styles compliment each other, but would like to see actua Cd cover on the Advertisement.

gender ratio: 6 Male/4 Female

Average Age : 18

Favourite genres of music : Rock-6 votes, pop-4 votes, indie-1 vote, other-2 votes

I have concluded from my questionaire that my digipak/advertisement suit the metal genre, and are appealing and satisfying the average audience from multiple genres of music.

Development

I apologise if the sound is a bit jumpy in places, i don't know how it happened.
This is my video for 'Danger line' with still a sequence of editing to do.

clips like the photo being torn and the train will be cut down/edited, as they are placeholders for future work.

This is my updated final Magazine advert