Laura Mossendew - Video Evaluation Question 4

Sarah Ellis: Evaluation Question Three

These are just six of the feedback sheets that we recieved. In total there were around fifteen sheets. There were a wide variety of positive comments which was lovely to read. Positive attributes that our audience liked about out video were:

- The signs

- The shot with the soldiers jumping over the camera

-The flashbacks

- The storyline

- Good acting

- The video fit the song

- Looked well directed

I identified key words in our feedback (positive and negative) and created a Wordle. It felt good to see that most of the words were positive. 

This shows me that people liked the flashbacks and thought we worked well. 

The issues that were raised in the audience feedback questionnaires were:

- Not enough lip syncing

- More realistic guns

- More shot ranges

I agree with most of the feedback up to a certain extent. Thirty Seconds to Mars do not over use lip syncing esspecially when it comes to their narrative videos which is why we concentrated on the narrative rather than including lots of lip syncing. However, I understand where the audience are coming from as most videos contain a lot of lip syncing.  

I heavily agree with the comment about the guns. We would have loved to have used more realistic guns though due to legal issues we were not able to be in public with close gun replicas. Therefore we had to improvise.

I disagree with the comment about shot ranges. I believe we have absolutly tonnes of shots and a variety of angles. Although the audience are of course entitled to their opinion. 

We didn't change our production due to audience feedback as we didn't conduct the feedback until after the hand in.

We spread our video far and wide. We uploaded it to YouTube and have recieved over 200 hits. Theres a tiny glimmer of hope that one of those views was Jared Leto! We also linked the video to Facebook.

We got lots of positive Facebook feedback which we were really happy about seen as we put so much work in.

We had everyone in our class give us a mark out of 40, and the average score was 37 which we were pleased with. 

Sarah Ellis: Evaluation Question Two

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

We made a great effort to maintain a clear image and theme that connected to the band and the narrative. The main method we have used for this, is the triad, which is the symbol that represents Thirty Seconds to Mars. We linked together our Jared Leto and our main soldier with the use of the triad necklace which they both wore.

The video also begins with a shot of the triad printed on one of the soldiers hands. 

When Sam dies at the end of the video, his triad is the object given to his wife. 

We thought a lot about this particular shot. Not only does it contain the triad, but it also contains the two wrist bands. Cathy and Connor are both sporting Afghan heros and help for heros wrist bands. This shows on Cathy's side that she was supporting Sam and on Connors side shows he is still supporting his fellow comrades. 

The triad links to the Echelon which we also tried to represent in our video by the use of Thirty Seconds to Mars fans singing sections of the song. Our ongoing theme that links everything together, is war. Vox Populi, is a song about unity and this is also the meaning of the triad. We linked the lyrics of the song in order to settle on the theme of war. We used various techniques to maintain this image including the use of costumes, fake weaponry, sound effects and camera angles. 

Our CD cover, website and video are all interrelated. They all consistantly portray the theme of war, and we worked hard in order to do this. The pictures we took for the digipak were taken on set, and we wanted to focus more on the theme of the song and the album for our digipak rather than the band. We used referance material in order to create the front and back cover, and we siloutted the soldiers against the smoke of the explosion.  Below are images which we used for reference for the front cover.

We also lightly created a triad within the smoke, again appealing to the echelon and linking to the band. 

We also incorporated the triad within the website. We created a triad out of photos of Cathy, Laura and I for the website background.

We focused on using the same font for the website and digipak which is an actual font that Thirty Seconds to Mars have used named Bank Gothic.  The images below are from our CD cover and website.

We wanted the soldiers to be strongly presented within our digipak, website and video. We did this by using shots of our soldiers Connor on the back cover, standing to fight and our main soldier Sam on this inside cover pointing a gun at the camera. 

We made sure to include many soldier images on the website in order to consistantly continue the war theme. They all have the same purpose; to evoke emotion from the viewers. 

It tackles current issues in the news and we also tried many things to make the video more emotional such as; Cathy being pregnant and her and Sam being settled with a home and a family dog. We believed because there was so much to lose for both characters that it would would make the video more emotional. We believe that the one thing that strongly links the website, digipak and video is an essence of power. On the digipak you have the explosion, on the website you have the soldiers in action, and in the video you have a full sequence of events. 

We kept a running theme through all three with the colour scheme. We used lots of black and deep red as these are colours that can remind you of death and other negative things.

Sarah Ellis: Evaluation Question One

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

I believe that our music video contains many aspects that use, challenge and develop conventions of real music videos. 

Key conventions that we used were generic conventions such as lip syncing, instruments and performance.

We use lip syncing less than the average music video, although there is a reason for that. In Thirty Seconds to Mars’s music video for the song, ‘This is War’, they concentrated less on performance but the lead singer lip synced as he played his part. We didn’t do this as our main character and our Jared Leto were different people unlike their videos which portray Jared as the performer as well as the main character as shown in the images to the left and right from their video 'The Kill'. To the left, Jared plays the character in the video, and to the right, the performer.

We used Zach as our Jared Leto and Sam as our main soldier. We believe this is how we have challenged this convention.  Instruments were important when filming our band scenes although we didn’t include as many close ups as we could. We decided against this so that we could fully concentrate on the narrative. Our performance develops conventions of their music videos.

Thirty Seconds to Mars rarely create regular performance within their videos. Their location for performance is usually different and it is a rarity that they just use a basic performance location, such as a stage. Their video for 'Closer to the edge' challenges this, seen as it is a combination of their tour videos, therefore you could also argue that they are trying to challenge their own conventions. For our performance, we set it in a forest, seen as it isn’t an everyday location in which to play instruments. Above is a shot of our forest band scene. Below is a shot from their video 'Capricorn' where they are featured performing in an underground dirt track, with their 'followers' looking down upon them.

I believe the convention in which we develop most has to be the narrative. It is always a strong part of Thirty Seconds to Mars’s videos, therefore we thought that we needed to use and also develop this aspect. We wanted a hard hitting issue to target as Thirty' are all about conveying a hard hitting message. They had already created a war themed video for their song 'This is War', although we wanted to develop the idea of a war theme. We wanted to make it more personal, and target families and fans to draw emotion from them and make them realise the loss that comes with war. We challenge conventions using conceptual ideas. Thirty ' often use conceptual ideas in their videos but it is usually to the extreme. We toned ours down to feature subtle conceptual elements. We did this because we wanted the video to be interpreted in different ways. We liked the idea that the video could be interpreted as one giant flashback, and that their was no wild flying guns or samurais to draw attention away from the message. Our conceptual section simply consisted of Cathy over Sam as he loses consciousness, even though it is really his comrades over him.

 

Reality                            Conceptual

The first image portrays the reality of the situation where Sam's comrades are over him, attempting to resuscitate. The conceptual idea is what Sam thinks he is seeing, which is in fact Cathy over him, in army uniform shouting his name.

The convention of length was one we used, but one that was also a risk. Thirty’s videos that contain a hard hitting narrative are generally quite long some even bordering on sixteen minutes. Our song Vox Populi was 5:57 in total. The shortened version didn’t contain the sections in which we wanted the main base of our narrative to sit ,therefore we made an executive decision to use the longer version. We planned our time very carefully in order to get all our footage filmed and edited.  

Quotations aren’t a typical convention of Thirty's videos but they do use them on the odd occasion. We used quotations as we believed that they were important for setting the tone and finishing the video. To the left is a quote from Thirty's video 'This is War' . This inspired us for out quote on the right.

 

Thirty Seconds to Mars Quote                                                                                               Our Quote

We created our quotation by simply using titles on IMovie. We went for the simplest font because its the message of the quote that counts and not the appearance. 

This is not our only use of quotes or significant words. We conducted a photo shoot of signs. We believe this was essential to our video as it shows the losses of relatives and friends of soldiers lost in war. They didn't turn out as bright as we would have liked but we still liked the shots. We kept the lighting visible in the shots as we didn't want it to look staged like a casual white background

Something that signifies Thirty Seconds to Mars is their symbol; The Triad. It is a symbol of unity which is what Thirty Seconds to Mars are all about.

This is something that we have used a lot in every stage of our project. It links everything together. It is in Thirty's videos, on merchandise, on their CD's, it is Thirty Seconds to Mars. It is the symbol of the Echelon. We wanted to link everyone in our video together using the Triad. Below are images of our main solider and lead singer sporting triad necklaces.  

This is an image of Jared Leto sporting two triads on his arms. 

We marked one of our soldier with a triad also

The Echelon are Thirty Seconds to Mars's fans. The Echelon is a name created for them by the band in order to create a kind of 'cult'. In many of their videos they include fans in their videos. Our song contained fans singing on the track, therefore we thought that it would benefit us to create our own mini Echelon. 

Our Echelon above

We took conventions from other music videos as well as films. A big  inspiration to us was 'The Ghost of you' video by the band My Chemical Romance because of the strength of the narrative and performance. The video evokes sadness and an essence of tradgedywhich is what we were aiming for with our video. 

Also in the video is a soldier kissing his necklace for luck just like Sam in our video.

The image to the left is from 'The ghost of you' and the image to the right is from our video.

Narrative is definitely a dominant factor within our video. Seen as Thirty Seconds to Mars are so passionate about the narrative of their videos, they tend to be longer than the average music video.  Their video for the song Hurricane is 13:13. I believe a very important part of our video which challenges conventions of our genre are our flashbacks. In many cases, we understand that they may be seen as just repeated use of footage but that simply wasn't the case. The shots which are repeated are repeated because they are the most emotive shots and the most tragic, therefore they would be the parts the soldiers would remember most.We also applied the effects of ghost trail ans black and white in order to differentiate from non flashback shots.

 

These are two pieces of footage which we incorporated in our flashbacks. The image to the left is a still shot of Sam and Cathy. It is her remembering the time which they've spent together. The right image is a flashback of Connor's portraying Sams resuscitation. We wanted to viewers to decided for themselves who the flashbacks belonged to.

 

In this particular shot we cut between flashback and reality within a split second. The black and white represents the flash back then we used the effect of wash out in order to flash back to colour. This was to represent that the soldiers are remembering the things they've just done.

We found lots of different sound effect add to our video. We ripped the sound for these two videos and used tiny sections in two parts of our video.


Call of duty radio sounds

War Sounds