Evaluation Activity 1 (part two) - Alex Brown and Laurence Ewen

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

Part 2

• Any other techniques used

To move our bear in the video, we had

to use puppeteering techniques to make it look effective. We originally thought about using sticks and strings, but after attempting this, we found it very difficult to move the bear aro

und, and it looked ineffective. Instead, we simply used our hands to move the bear around. This means that the shots look relatively realistic as no visuals of puppeteering equipment can be seen, which could have been an issue had sticks or strings been used.

In the image shown, we wanted to show the bear walking through the car park. To do this, we used our hands and held the legs of the bear, and then simulated walking movements. The camera just cuts out the hands of the person moving the bear.

• Special effects

One of special effects we used was slow motion, which we used when the bear gets kicked through the air. We decided to use this effect here

as it enhances the dramatic effect for the audience and creates suspense, as the audience are unaware of what will happen next. Slow motion was also in the shots where the coin is tossed into the bear's money pot (seen to the right) and when the bear falls off the bus shelter bench.

Another special effect we used was dissolve. This was a useful effect as it enabled us to edit the shots together with fluidity, thereby enhancing the continuity of the scenes. The use of dissolving also makes the viewing of the video more pleasant as shots flow together better. In addition to the dissolve special effect for transitioning between shots, fades to and from black are also included in the video. This is often to represent a change of setting, suggesting the introduction of a new scene. Plus, the effect is used at the end of the video when the bear is looking over a ledge of a multi-story car park contemplating suicide, and this adds in enhancing the sense of ambiguity in the question of the viewer over whether the bear jumps off the building or not.

Blurring was another technique we used several times in the video. In the introductory scene, it works to give the impression that the bear is just waking up and his eyes are adjusting to the surroundings. With the iMovie software, we were able to reduce the opacity of the blur to enhance the perception of the bear's regaining of consciousness (as seen in the image to the left). The effect was used again later in the video as a transition into the bear's daydream. A 'flash

' effect was also used here to make the state change of the scene into a daydream more obvious and to represent an alteration in consciousness for the bear.

• Performance

For our video, we did not include any 'performance'. Our idea had the bear as the protagonist, and having a performance would not suit our idea. Originally we thought of having lip-syncing used in the video, with a passer-by singing the lyrics, but we decided against this as it would not have been appropriate or relevant to our video. Also, as our main character is a soft toy, it would have been impossible to have the character lip-syncing realistically.

• How the video suggests the music genre of the track

In our research, we looked at many videos from the genre which our song was from, such as Massive Attack's 'Teardrop'. All of these videos shared similar conventions. Lighting was relatively dark throughout the videos and they evoked similar sombre emotions. We tried to reflect this in our video, and it's dark atmosphere is evident throughout with the content of the plot (such as when the bear is contemplating suicide in the car park, as seen in the image to the right) and the dark lighting in most of the shots.

• How does your video reflect research done into the style of the artist's other videos.

We also researched many of the music videos by Unkle themselves. One of these videos were for the track, 'Be There' which is also featured on the Psyence Fiction album and is similarly categorised as 'trip hop'. This video, too, included dark lighting, a relatively slow pace and dark colours, like our video. We followed these conventions particularly in the car park scene which shows the bear approaching a ledge in contemplation of suicide. The interior of the

tall car park is seen to be quite run down, dilapidated and isolated, with no presence of other beings in the area, which can be seen in the image to the left.