EVALUATIONBy Danielle Emmett

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

My music video challenges real media conventions as it is set in an environment that the audience can relate to, rather than for example a huge Hollywood house with a swimming pool. I tried to make the character seem as ‘normal’ and everyday as possible rather than dress him up to look like a Hollywood star. By him wearing plain looking clothes a sense of normality is achieved as people can relate to wearing these kind of clothes as they go about their everyday lives.

In terms of camera and editing I used effects such as a cross dissolve in order to give the video a more professional feel and used quick, different shots to give the sense of a fast paced journey which is similar to a lot of upbeat pop videos such as Pixie Lott’s ‘All About Tonight’ video where the editing is quite moderate tempo but you can still follow the narrative of the video easily without becoming confused.

In terms of storyline, my music video has a continuous time sequence and tells the story of a teenage boy who cannot stop shuffling. The camera follow him throughout his day and catches different encounters that occur such as him having to see the school nurse. I think this is a particular element present in most pop music videos nowadays as videos like Taylor Swift’s ‘You Belong With Me’ video also portrays a continuous time sequence and tells a story.

The genre of my music video is comedy as watching the teenage boy dance around all day long in different situations is amusing and this is what I tried to convey to the audience through camera and mise en scene.

How effective is the combination of your main product and

ancillary texts?

My ancillary texts fit into the comedy genre as I tried to make them seem as out there and colourful as I could. As I used Photoshop to create my ancillary texts I gained a wide variety of skills which helped me to add detail to my texts and helped me to appreciate the program more.

On the front cover of my ancillary features a close up of the teenage boy to help convey the emotion on his face to the audience as he seems extraordinarily happy.

On the back cover of my ancillary a large long shot image of the teenage boy is used to create the feeling that he is still dancing even though he is still. The back cover also features realistic items that you would normally expect to find on the back of a CD cover, such as a barcode and logos of the music company that manages the artist.

In this case I chose Sony Music Entertainment and it’s subsidiary Columbia Records to feature on the back of my CD as they are well respected and highly successful labels.

I took the inspiration for my music poster from artists like Katy Perry and Pixie Lott who’s CD covers and posters are quite colourful so I wanted to create a poster that matched modern media conventions.

My ancillary tasks helped prepare me for my music video as I had an insight of how to structure and edit my music video to make it look the best that it could and to give that slightly professional feel to it.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Before I started my project, I carried out some relevant audience research so I had an idea of what an audience who was a fan of pop music would expect and like to see in a music video. I did this by creating a questionnaire and a set of focus group questions that I gave out to various people and once I’d collected the data, I transferred it into easy to understand pie charts.

I thought that a focus group would be a good idea to create along with a questionnaire as they would give more specific detail and although in some ways they can be time consuming, it is a sure way to know exactly what your audience expects.

This is the template of my questionnaire and focus group that I gave to people to complete.

Need to put pie charts in here.....

How did you use media technologies in the construction

and research, planning and evaluation stages?

For my coursework I used various different computer programs which allowed me to interpret my skills and improve them by using the software as often as I did. A particular program that I used often was Photoshop in which I was not that confident using as first as there were so many different options to choose from when creating something.

Using Premiere was new to me as I’d only ever used the software once before so I had forgotten how to do certain things but it became easy to used once I had uploaded the footage and was editing our video. There were quite a few effects that I used in our music video such as a cross dissolve in order to make time seem as though it had passed in the storyline and to create the sense that this had elements of a real professional music video.

Blogger was one of the most if not the most used website I used whilst completing my coursework. By using Blogger I could keep up with all of my work and have it organised tidily without losing any of my files. It allowed me to see what work had been completed and what work still needed to be done and it helped me a lot.

YouTube was also a very important website that I used as I had to post my music video onto the site before embedding it onto blogger. Seeing my music video on a file sharing website made it seem that more professional.