Evaluation
- 2. In what way does your media product use, develop and challenge forms of conventions of real media products. The music video I have created for my media product falls in the genre of Indie as the band I am using the song from are an Indie pop band. My music video is a video of a group of friends who are both boys and girls and there is a love interest between two of the characters. It starts off with filming of just the girls chatting and walking down a path in one of the locations. This cuts to a flashback of one of the girls getting ready for her day to meet her friends. I have also included shots of performance and smoking as that is a typical convention of an indie music video. When it came to research and planning my main influences for my idea was based upon many different styles and artists. For example one of my influences was based off of a split screen video ‘We Don’t Talk Anymore’ by Charlie Puth as I like the idea of showing two sides of the story at the same time. Another influence was the artists themselves of the song I am using, who are the ‘American Authors’. Their previous videos are more performance than anything else of them just walking around playing and singing. I kept the idea of showing two different lives through the boy group and the girl group but I sided against using a split screen because in the end of my music video the two lives became one.
- 3. In what way does your media product use, develop and challenge forms of conventions of real media products. Narratives I have followed: ● The main theorist and narrative for my idea is Michel Foucault as he looks at the past in order to write the ‘history of the present’. Archeology is about looking at history to understand what has led to the present. I have applied this to my music video by using flashbacks in my video. ● I go against Todorov’s Equilibrium narrative as the music video only really has an equilibrium and new equilibrium as there is no downside to the video. The two characters with a love interest just become closer as the video goes on. ● Propp is a narrative I do follow as there is a princess and hero present as the two main characters.
- 4. In what way does your media product use, develop and challenge forms of conventions of real media products. The conventions I followed and challenged: ● Low budgeting- Indie music videos generally have simple locations like cities and parks typically because of how easy it is and how much money they have to spare. ● Mise En Scene is a code that I challenged as retro clothing is a typical convention in indie music videos, but I liked the idea of challenging and keeping it modern in every possible way in the locations I filmed, props I used and clothing used. ● I chose not to follow the convention of black and white shots in the editing as it was not the style of music video I have created. Not all indie videos do this however, but one band that does is The Hunna. ● Performance is a very big part of indie music videos and therefore I had a couple of clips of a guitarist playing the chords of the song for me for a few of the shots. Not all of my video was performance however as the style of music video I wanted to create was narrative. ● I did use props which is normal for an indie music video as they have different shots of performance, smoking etc. These are the two I included along with the typical coffee shop location. ● All sound was non-diegetic and only the song because I wanted to defy the convention of background music. ● The main shots in my music video are close ups and medium shots as that is a convention I followed for my video.
- 5. How effective is the combination of the main ancillary texts? My Website My website for my music video includes shots from the video and all my location shots in my gallery page. When it came to creating my website I wanted to have a page for my cast, the music and the gallery along with the home page. When creating the site, I liked how much you get into creating it and how fun it can be designing your own website. I have learnt so much on how to make certain pages and a way to make it look like a professional website for a new music video. I had a few troubles with developing it from the start to now the finish because of the first film shoot. My first draft wasn’t good as the filming I did needed a lot of improving, enough to re do the whole thing. However, when I did start re-filming I documented it a lot better and made sure I had enough for the video and both my ancillary texts to complete them at a better quality. Overall I am happy with how my website turned out after all the work I put into it to make it how it is now and improve it to make it look more professional and have better quality images then before.
- 6. How effective is the combination of the main ancillary texts? My Digipak Similar to my website I did struggle with my digipak at the very beginning when I handed in my first draft as it was not up to standard and I knew I could do better. After re-filming again, I looked more into American Authors previous digipak to see how they set them out and I got some inspiration. They tend to use a cityscape as their front cover and I used a picture of New York from which I took over New Years. From there I used my own images through the shoots of the actors I used so it made more sense then using the band themselves. I added in a barcode and record label, the band name and the album name on the cover and binder of the case and also the logo of the band for the CD page. I like how I have finished of my case as it makes more sense then the previous edit.
- 7. How effective is the combination of the main ancillary texts? Overall I think the ancillary texts combined together are effective as it makes my music video seem more professional. It was difficult to begin with to create three products in sync with each other as it was tricky to find good shots for all three tasks and to make them all make sense to each other not just on their own. However, I believe I managed to complete this very well. They are also effective for my music video as it is a way of seeing what the music video will show and the characters playing parts. It is a way of bringing everything nicely together and making it all work correctly in unison in a professional manner which isn’t always achievable when missing certain parts of the ancillary texts.
- 8. What have you learned from your audience feedback? For question one I asked my study group a very broad question being ‘Do you like the video’. All three answered yes but like I said it is a very closed question. From this question however, I have learnt that my target audience liked my music video when I first screened it which was my draft three. This helped for future drafts as I knew that they liked my basic idea of the video but needed improvements for them to feel more engaged with it.
- 9. What have you learned from your audience feedback? Question two was more in depth about my music video as it asks an important question about the overall editing. My focus group all said yes and one added ‘it gave it a natural feel’. Regarding my responses I disagreed with them because it wasn’t my idea to film it in that way. I learnt from this that even though my audience may like it unstabilized, they would also agree with it being stable and more visible.
- 10. What have you learned from your audience feedback? ‘How should I improve it’ was my third question and my responses were all different. One said ‘add a colour grade’, another said ‘include more ranges of shots’ and the last said to ‘stabilize’ it. From these answers I improved my video by reshooting stable shots and stabilizing the shots that were slightly shaky, I added in different ranges of shots and adjusted the light of the video to make it more retro and in trend with indie pop.
- 11. What have you learned from your audience feedback? For my fourth que question I asked what my audience thought it was about. This was the question I focused most on after getting feedback because it was a basic response without not seeing the true meaning. All feedback was based on meeting new people or meeting up with friends, but I wanted to show a love interest in the music video so after the answers were received I refilmed to create a better narrative.
- 12. What have you learned from your audience feedback? The angles of my music video were general and I wanted to know of the group would like to see more different shots. This is why I asked if they did the video justice. Two answered with yes and the last answered with not understanding the question and how it could do the video justice. I learnt from this that I needed more interesting angles to catch the eye of my target audience in order to keep them entertained.
- 13. What have you learned from your audience feedback? To find out about my skills I asked what my strengths were. All answers were different. Good cast, good idea, editing and good DOP were my strengths. I disagreed with my cast as I found them slightly difficult to work with but did use a couple of them again when refilming as I found them good to work with, I have been improving on my editing as I go along and I narrated my idea better so it is clear in the video.
- 14. What have you learned from your audience feedback? Finally, I asked my focus group if the music works well with my video. Luckily they all agreed and said yes. This allowed me to see that my idea has a good story and works well for an indie song. Some songs are performance but my audience prefered the narrative look on it. This taught me that I just needed to edit it better and refilm certain parts to make it better and up to standard for a music video.
- 15. What have you learned from your audience feedback? This feedback is from my website and it was analysed by one of my classmates. She said it had a good layout, the black and white was effective and my photographs were composed well. My main improvements were to change the main title to make it bolder and bigger. I learnt that I needed to re do my website in order for it to match my new video and get more feedback.
- 16. What have you learned from your audience feedback? This feedback is for my digi pak and I got two of my classmates to give me feedback for it. My strengths included the design and the images I used for my pak. Improvements included the image quality being quite blurry and not being able to read the lyrics. I took this on board and re took my pictures and changed the font and colour of my text.
- 17. What have you learned from your audience feedback? Further feedback I received was from my second focus group nearing the end of my coursework. I was given smaller tasks to complete in order to get the best grade possible. This included switching pictures around, including the band and adjusting sizes for both my digi pak and website. For my music video I needed to redo my editing so the narrative made more sense, no need to refilm but also add in some shots to make it better. This was helpful as I wanted to achieve the best possible grade I could get.
- 18. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Google classroom is one of the technologies I used for planning as this is one of the platforms I used to get feedback on. I used it with classmates in my studies so it was an easy access to certain aspects of my course including my blog and publishing surveys and responses. It was extremely helpful as it was an easy accessible way to ask for feedback and show my peers my work.
- 19. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Survey monkey was another planning technology as this was how I created my survey for the feedback for my focus group. Similar to google classroom this was another easy platform as it is easy to follow and can be easily accessed by my focus group when I needed them to answer the questions for me. I have used this platform before and will continue to when I need to.
- 20. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? This was the website I used to make my website, which was one of my ancillary texts. I had the choice of using this or another platform but found this simple enough and interesting for my ancillary to be completed on. Therefore, my construction of my website was greatly helped through using this company.
- 21. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Photoshop was used for creating and editing my digi pak. I found it easy to use and different ways to edit photos and make them look how I wanted them to. This was purely used for the construction stage of my course as it doesn’t include any planning, research or evaluation in the platform. The app is used purely for editing and adjusting images which came in handy when I was designing my drafts for the digi pak.
- 22. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? This app is Google Slides. This is the platform I used for completing my evaluation. I used this app last time I made my evaluation for my AS level in Media. I like this platform as it is easily accessible from wherever you use it because it is connected to your google account. Google slides can be used for presentations and powerpoints, similar to microsoft. I also used the platform for my ‘progress so far’ slideshow half way through the course to explain and analyse where I was at.
- 23. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Wordpress is where I documented all of my work, research, planning, construction and evaluation. This was helpful as I could keep everything in the same place instead of having them all in different places which would make it difficult to keep track on everything. For my research I would make blog posts to keep updated when I did more. This would also apply to both construction of both my music video adn my ancillary texts and the planning stages.
- 24. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Premiere, similar to photoshop was used for construction only as this was how I created my music videos. Premiere is an app that is used to create moving images, videos. This is similar to iMovie however, it is more advanced and my prefered option for creating music videos, short films, moving images etc. Each time I would have to edit or reshoot I could always go back to premiere and just adjust my video instead of starting all over again.
- 25. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Youtube is a platform I used for both research and construction. I found all of my music videos that I analysed through youtube, I also exported all of my drafts, vlog and animatic on this same platform. It was easier to use as planning and construction progressed as the course went on and I changed certain parts of my video or planning.