Evaluation

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

Our media product uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products in different ways. Our music video is stereotypical by the way that it uses Goodwin’s ideas of a media product. The song we chose for our music video is a very quirky and upbeat song which for me reminds me of summer and makes me smile. For example it demonstrates genre characteristics by the way in which the visuals in the music video and also editing techniques are quirky and upbeat to match the style of the song. As the song reminded us of summer and gave us the idea of having a group picnic we wanted to reflect this fun and energetic summer feel within our video. We filmed on a sunny day but also edited in a summery/hazy feel to the visual creating an almost vintage memory style visual for the viewer which we felt worked really well. We also gained inspiration to do this idea from watching other products that we have analysed. One of these was from the artist Noah and the Whale whose lively visuals and songs are really addictive for their audience. In one of their videos they played around with a vintage style hazy effect and we thought that it was really effective and gave an extra element of fun to the video and therefore decided to experiment with it in our own video. Also in this way there is a relationship between music and visuals as the upbeat music and beat within the track is reflected within our video due to the style and pace. Lyrics and visuals are also explored thoroughly by our footage of a lively group of friends having fun on a summery day, which is a theme reflected within the lyrics of the song.

We did also develop and challenge the forms and conventions of real media products as we wanted to make our video more exciting and entertaining for our viewer. As we wanted to really emphasise the liveliness and originality of the song that we chose in our video we decided to play around and experiment with different things throughout the process, some of which failed and some of which were successful. One thing that we found really successful and thought added a lot of fun to the video was using a fast forward/rewind technique on some of our footage. When editing we added the technique to some of footage showing our characters doing something. The footage would then rewind slightly and they would do the same thing again. We thought that this was really effective as it emphasised the specific actions and also is different to any other effects/techniques that we have seen when analysing other music video’s recently.

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

I think that the combination of our main product and ancillary texts are very effective as they have a clear link. We based the theme of our ancillary texts around the main themes apparent within our music video which are fun and food, although we did take into account the fact that the ancillary texts are representative of say an album and still thought that due to our artists quirky and lively representation that this was still expressed through the ideas that we used. For our ancillary texts we created a magazine advert promoting our music video, a Digi-pack and also an extra tour poster which we feel all work together to create an effective promotional package. We used screen shots from our music video for both the Digi-pack and Tour poster which we thought would look effective. These were group shots emphasising the energetic, together feel of the artist overall and chose quirky fonts, and bright, summery colours to emphasise this even more. For our magazine advert we used a well composed photograph of food which relates to our picnic scene in our video as we thought that it was very eye catching. We feel that overall the set of 3 ancillary texts do continue to communicate the idea of a quirky artist and summer fun concept to their work which is apparent in our music video. We feel that we have appealed to our target audience of male and female teenagers and young adults due to the quirky and original ideas and theme that we have used throughout our products. We feel that being original with ideas really stands out from the crowd.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Receiving feedback from both peers and other students was really helpful as it allowed us to be able to expand on and improve our ideas. We had criticism on our original idea that we pitched for as others felt that it was not an original enough idea. Even though receiving negative feedback was a knock for us, we also felt that it was beneficial as it gave us a chance to rethink our original ideas and why they were not very successful and achievable. We then chose to pitch for our second choice of song which we all felt was more suitable due to the amount of fun and different ideas that we were coming up with. We chose this song after we had positive feedback on our ideas as they had a unique and quirky concept that seemed to stand out.
The feedback from the rough cut of our video was fairly positive as both peers and teachers thought that our idea and concept and also footage was successful but we just needed to tweak and add some more to the video in order to make it more entertaining for the viewer. We found the feedback really useful as it allowed us to identify specific aspects of the video that needed a bit more work and focus on improving them. The negative feedback received was mainly based around our editing and the fact that it was quite boring and repetitive. We also did not have any shots of the song being sung in our video and upon receiving this feedback realised that this was something that would improve our video a lot. We received positive feedback about our reversing technique which we ourselves though was successful so decided to include this technique in more of our video as we thought it was really creative.

Overall, the feedback we had throughout the process was really beneficial as it allowed us to get another opinion on our work and have the chance to improve and add more to it in order to make the final product as successful as possible.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage?

Media technologies available to us throughout the music video process were really helpful as they allowed us to create a really successful final product. We used Blogger to document our planning, researching and developments throughout the project. Blogger was really useful as it allowed us to quickly jot any ideas on it and then edit and view them when needed. It also allowed us to document our inspirations and research into other media products and also compare them to our own ideas and products easily. Final Cut was the software that allowed us to create our music video and this was an essential. Final Cut is a really good program as it is quite advanced and therefore has a lot of capabilities. It allowed us to create a really professional final product and also use many exciting and new techniques and editing effects that we had not used before in our video. I found I was able to experiment more and explore Final Cut within this project due to our quirky style of video as we experimented with fun filters and effects that Final Cut had to offer. Photoshop is an advanced digital editing software which we created our final magazine advert, digi-pack and tour poster products on. We also created various mood boards and planning items earlier on in the project using it as it had endless possibilities and for me is really easy to use. Using all of these programs allowed us to create a very professional and well made set of products overall.

The HD cameras were also a really useful piece of equipment as they allowed us to capture high quality and a wide range of shots when filming. We also used the HD camera to take still shots all throughout the music video project and all of these came out successfully. The tripod that came with the camera was also really beneficial as it made sure that our footage was not shaky and blurry due to instability.

Overall all of the technologies used allowed us to be really creative and innovative as in the various stages of creating our final product we were always able to record our ideas and inspirations clearly and effectively or access high quality and professional equipment easily. I would say that in terms of creating a professional image that higher quality DSLR cameras would have been useful as these are much higher quality than just a standard stills camera.