Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Real media products use a set of conventions and forms during their music video these include such things as lip syncing, this is when the artist in the video mimes to the song. Another main convention which is used is the lyrics relate to the music in some way by either amplifying, illustrating or contradict the lyrics. Also there is often a relationship between the visuals and the music, as well these amplify, illustrate or contradict the lyrics. The video should create a feeling/mood which fits to the genre of the song. The use of close-ups is used to advertise the artist and meet the demands of the record label. Mis-en scene is an important form in real media product the mis-en-scene needs to fit with the genre of the song.
Overall we felt that our media product used the main forms and conventions of real media products, although we did think that we challenged some of them. We wanted to use the conventions and forms to create a realistic video but we wanted to make our video unique. Firstly the use of lip syncing throughout our music video is a main use of convention of real media products. The majority of modern music videos which are in the charts and on the internet have the artist lip syncing to create a realistic video of the artist actually singing. In our music video Olivia lip synced throughout the entirety of the music video, this is why we felt we used one of the main conventions. Although in every scene on the music video Olivia is not always seen lip syncing it is always her who is doing it, unlike in some modern videos such as Nickelback’s Rockstar, where there are a lot of different people lip syncing to one voice. Olivia is playing the part of Charlene in our video and we felt it suited our genre to just keep Olivia as the only one to lip sync. The use of lip syncing is a main convention and created a realistic feel to our video.
Another use of the mains forms and conventions of real media products that we used was the way that the lyrics amplified the visuals. This is because our music video told a story; however there was not direct obvious reference from the lyrics to the visuals throughout the video. However there are parts of the music videos which do make obvious reference, there is some points where the lyrics illustrate the visuals for example the line in the song which says ‘lying on the sun kissed grass’ Olivia and Derek are actually lying on grass.
The mise-en-scene used in our music video uses the conventions of a real music video because it fits our genre, we created a fairy-tale like theme throughout which was shown in the mise-en scene.
A challenge to forms and conventions of real media products which we felt we used was the use of locations. We chose to film all outside, with no filming in a studio like setting, we didn’t just film all in the countryside or all in the city we used both. We felt by only filming outside and filming in two opposite locations was a challenge because usually real music videos either chose to film in one or the other.
We used i-stop motion during our music video too. We felt this was a challenge of forms and conventions of real music videos as not many music videos use this technique, however we did find an example of this in Kate Nash- Foundations. i-stop motion is a technique used to make certain objects look as if they are moving, in our case crisps and beer. Although this is not what you would expect in our genre we felt this gave our video an edge and gave the unique factor that we wanted to achieve.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of our main product and our ancillary texts was an effective one we felt this was a success. There were many clear themes that ran throughout the main product and ancillary texts which made a clear link through the whole product. Each ancillary text had reference to the main product of the music video. As the ancillary texts were advertising the product we wanted to make sure there was a clear theme. One theme was the colour yellow, this was a simple yet effective theme. Yellow was used in a lot of the video, for example the costume worn by Olivia was yellow and the fairy lights used in Lucy’s back garden were also yellow. Furthermore yellow was used in both of the ancillary texts; firstly it was used for the font on the album digi-pak as well as the yellow daffodil which is on the front of the album cover, and on the magazine posters the many daffodils used were different shades of yellow. We felt yellow was an appropriate colour to use as the song used in our music video is called ‘daffodils’ and daffodils are yellow. By dressing Olivia in yellow in the video it is as if she is representing a daffodil.
Another clear theme used throughout the whole project was the theme of countryside/nature. We felt this was another appropriate theme because of the genre of the song (alternative folk), it fitted well. We wanted to create a fairy tale like theme and the countryside was great for this. On both the magazine poster and the album cover nature is clearly a theme as the background of both of these ancillary texts is a countryside view, with the blue sky and green grass. The same logos and same font was used on both the digi-pak and magazine cover too to make an obvious link between the two ancillary texts, people will know they are advertising the same product.
By having a clear theme throughout it makes it obvious to the audience (customers in this case) that the products are related thus more profit. If we were entering the whole product on to the market this would be very important.


What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Our audience feedback for our final project was positive which suggested that our media video was a success. We were given feedback throughout the entire project, this proved to be very helpful as there were a lot of things which people felt should be added when watching our rough cut. Our rough cut feedback was the most useful feedback because it allowed us to gather different people’s opinions on our video so far and allowed us to pick up on certain parts which the majority of people felt should be changed, and things which people felt were missing. Our rough cut feedback highlighted the need for more close ups of Olivia the main character, particularly of Olivia singing, we took this into account and added more close ups, improving our final video. Another point learnt from our audience feedback on our rough-cut was the need for more obvious directs to the camera. We added more of these. As well as learning that we needed to add certain things to our work the feedback also reassured us that what we had done so far was productive, the rough-cut feedback said that the settings used were good and fitted with our genre well. This was a relief as if people felt that the locations were wrong it would seem the whole video was slightly strange! Olivia’s performance skills were noted as being good too which we were very glad to hear.
We also got given audience feedback for our final product. This was very positive which we were pleased about. The audience liked the way that the characters interacted naturally with each other; this gave it a realistic feel, which was good. We wanted the video to be like a story, Olivia and Derek playing the two characters in the song, we were pleased that the characters acted naturally together because we wanted the video to tell a story. Also our feedback on our final cut didn’t pick up on anything that we had missed. Also the things which people felt were lacking in; such as close –ups were not mentioned. We felt we had improved the problems, which had been previously mentioned.
The feedback stated that the way the characters interacted was good and was realistic. The use of different locations was also credited, the audience feedback said that the countryside locations used fitted our genre well and the alternative pub scene was good.


How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used new media technologies throughout the entire construction of our music video including the research planning and evaluation stages. We used such programmes as ITunes, Final cut, Photoshop, Blogger and YouTube. We also used a camera and video camera.
Firstly during the planning of our music video we used ITunes, we used this programme to listen to the CD of different tracks, which we were given and chose our song. We also used this programme to continuously listen to the song throughout the product.
Throughout the planning stage of our project we also used blogger. This is a programme that entitled us to keep a diary of what we had been researching and planning, this was useful and helpful because it allowed us to read back our previous blogs. We used the internet to research popular music videos mainly the website YouTube was used, this was because YouTube allowed us to watch popular music videos and analyse the videos. By analysing modern music videos this allowed us to pick out certain characteristics that we wanted to include in our video.
During the actual construction of our video we used a video camera to film the video. We also used a stills camera to take photos of the creation of the video, for example we took photos of the setting up of Lucy’s garden, and this enabled us to upload the photos straight to blogger so our blog used both photos and written diary entries to show what we had been doing. This made our blog more interesting. Final cut allowed us to edit out the mistakes in our video and change the order if we wanted to.
During the creation of our ancillary texts Photoshop was the main new media technology that was used; this meant we could edit each photo and add text to our poster and album cover easily. By having these new technologies at a low cost it allow new artists to easily be able to get their music out there by using sites like YouTube. The different programmes are quite complicated but it is easy to grasp the context of what to do and how to actually use the programmes.