1. A2 Media Music Video
Evaluation
By Luke Tanner

2. My media product is a concept and narrative music video for the Coldplay song ‘The Scientist’. Because of the
songs slightly depressing tone and romantic lyrics I used most of the conventions for the music video genre but I
also used other different techniques to make the video unique to most.
According to Andrew Goodwin’s ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ theory generally most music videos for
pop/rock songs show a strong narrative which link to the lyrics of the song and they also often have a unique
concept to stand out from other videos. Because ‘The Scientist’ is a pop/rock song and these conventions are so
fixed I chose to include many of the same conventions for the music video.
The narrative of my music video is of a young couple who break up and focusses on the effects of this on the
protagonist (the ex-boyfriend) which is a very common element in that genre of music, so I just used that
convention. Another convention that I used was focussing on the narrative as a very significant element of the
music video to be used as the basis for the entire thing, which is often the case for most music videos with a
romantic narrative.
To adhere to the depressing tone of the song and the narrative, the editing was kept quite simple; fades were
used between some scenes which suggests a loss of time and to fit with the slow tempo of the song, cuts were
used on the beats of the music to show a relation to the song and some flash effects were used to suggest a
flashback to the past.

3. Despite mainly using conventions of that specific music video genre I did include a concept idea that is quite
unique and challenges most conventions for that genre. Most pop/rock music videos are solely live action videos
but I included a few stop motion scenes where there was a very literal interpretation of the lyrics being drawn in a
book. This concept broke the conventions of the genre that were established earlier in my music video and used
to give a more understandable display of the lyrics and the narrative of the video to the target audience. This stop
motion concept is quite unique to the pop/rock music video genre as it is something that you would expect more
from the indie genre, so it challenges the conventions of the genre.
I also went against Todorov’s narrative theory with the story of the video, rather than beginning the video with
equilibrium between the couple it begins with the disruption of the equilibrium and the equilibrium isn’t regained
by the end of the narrative. I chose to do this in order to challenge the audience and make them slightly
uncomfortable as it will be more memorable, this is because Todorov’s theory can be applied to most music
videos of this genre.
In order to appeal to my target audience who often watch music videos, I mainly decided to stick to most of the
conventions of the genre but added a unique feature to stand out and make it memorable.

4. The effectiveness of my main product which was the scientists by Coldplay music video and my two ancillary
tasks in the form of an album art work design and a magazine advert to advertise the album went really well. For
the ancillary tasks I tried to keep similar conventions and themes in the forms of colours and images so that it
would make the products more recognisable to a consumer and make it look more professional. Below you can
see two images, the one on the bottom left is the front of my album booklet and it is of our galaxy and the one on
the bottom right is the magazine advertisement.
To get a similar trend throughout my design work I used the colours in the Milky Way on my advertisement in the
magazine as I thought the colours made it look eye catching and I was still using the same colours throughout my
designs.
These colours are used throughout my ancillary tasks. I also came up with the name Fluke records in the bottom
right of the magazine to help add realism.

5. With the continuous trend in my ancillary tasks and main product but similar lighting and colours it helps to
create an effective combination. I also used one of the props found in the video and in the ancillary tasks to create
a good link between the products.
Another key convention used in both ancillary tasks is the tape seen on the magazine in the picture above as it is
also used in the album artwork as it’s my front cover for the album, this is good effective combination as it makes
the products look connected and helps to create a brand identity for our record label Fluke records so that if this
was really being sold it would make the album easily recognisable by the fan, by similar use of graphics and style
and also the use of the records.

6. Audience feedback was an important part of my project because without it doesn’t think I could have created a
music video and Digipak that would suit the audience so well and be so successful.
As part of our research into our music video we produced a questionnaire which was to highlight what target
audience and age range our music video would best suit from this feedback, I established that our music video
would be aimed at teens to early 30`s from the mixed group of people that we got to complete the questionnaire
on our video idea. From this I produced an effective music video aimed at this age group and both genders.
I then used audience feedback to tweak our video before fully publishing it which helped a lot as the audience
said the flashbacks were not clear enough and were not long enough and from this we changed the flashbacks to
make them clearer this then meant 96% of people understood the concept of the video after one watch as
compared to nearly half the test group didn`t understand. This was vital to the success of the video because it
wouldn`t be good if most people didn`t understand the concept.

7. Before I began work on the Digipak and poster I did seem preliminary research into existing album artwork and
posters to get a rough idea of what our target audience and age group would expect, this helped me because I
could then ask I selection of people from our audience of what appealed to them, and gave me some examples of
their favourites, from this I was able to produce a Digipak and poster that appealed to a wider audience.
I also showed them some examples of existing poster to get an idea of what stood out to them the most and to
see what layout they liked so that I didn`t miss out on key conventions used in posters to catch the audiences eye
which then led to the Artist name and album title as the main features as well as a seller as a key icon so they
know where to buy it I used the Kooks magazine cover as a rough basis as a lot of the audience feedback said that
they liked this one as it was simple, told them what they needed to know and had a good image, also the HMV
logo was good as it gave them a strong recognisable brand behind the band.
Without audience feedback I don’t feel that our Digipak or especially our poster would be successful because
with them we wouldn’t have been able to differentiate the different music promotional adverts and which would
suit our audience the best so that we could get maximum appeal.

8. Throughout the project I had to use quite a few different types of technologies to create certain things. Most of
those media technologies that I used were used during the construction stages for the music video and ancillary
tasks.
The most important media technology that was used for creating the video was a Sony HD digital video camera
as it was used to film the footage that would be used in the music video. The camera was used to create many
different types of shots and used with a tripod in order to achieve steady shots that would be clean and appear
professional; the footage was then uploaded onto a video editing program for the post production stage.
Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11.0 was the most important program that I used as it was used in the
post production stage to edit the music video. I had to learn how to use the program from scratch with using
effects, cutting and splitting clips and many other features. Audacity 1.3 was also used in the post production
stage to edit the audio of the song by cutting a long instrumental sequence and create a fade at the end; this
would make a seamless and shorter video to appeal to the target audience.

9. For the research and planning stages Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer were the main things I used. Internet Explorer
was used to research many things such as other music videos which would be used for comparisons and inspiration while
Microsoft Word was used to analyse different things and to record the production stage which would then be uploaded to
Blogger.
For creating the ancillary products in the production stage quite a few different programs were used. Adobe InDesign
was the main program that was used for creating the CD case and booklet as well as the magazine advert; it was used for
editing text and images in a way to make it look professional. Adobe Fireworks was also used when creating the ancillary
tasks. It was used mainly for editing images to fit in with the designs and resizing.
During the evaluation stage I used Microsoft PowerPoint as I would later upload it onto SlideShare with would then in
turn be uploaded onto my blog. Blogger is a very important part of the project as everything that I have created will be
uploaded onto it. Images, videos and text are all uploaded onto my Blogger account to show a complete project and show
the process of production.