Evaluation

Jessica Baker

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

Our music video had many conventions throughout that we had included from our music video research and analysis into typical features that were needed or well recognised with music videos. An example of a few of these features are;

• Having a easy to follow narrative• Lyrics correlating with visuals• Close ups• Point of view shots• Intertextuality

Having an easy to follow and sometimes stereotypical narrative to a music video can be extremely beneficial, as there are many examples to work off and the audience will most likely be able to easily understand and relate to the story and characters. Our narrative was an easily understood ‘love story’, where a boy falls in love with an older girl and gets his heart broken, this can follow and also break conventions, as even though the start and middle follow an up-beat hopeful storyline, the ending leaves a negative stand still, where in fact there wasn’t a happy ending. This is uncommon in modern music videos as most have a happy ending or some kind of positive resolution.

Lyrics correlating with visuals was something we gathered from audience research as well as our video analysis, we found that having a direct link between the two made the music video a little more relatable with the song and the audience. This was such a small factor but had a huge impact, so we got straight on to incorporating a shot or a prop to relate to the lyrics directly.Some examples of this were;When the lyrics say “Somebody once asked could I spare some change for gas” we fitted in where our character buys flowers for the girl we get him to pay for them in change.

We got several close ups of our main character and of specificSections of the song and video we wanted to make obvious that They were important. Such as our Point of view shots..

And then our close ups of reactions to our sad ending from the main character. Emphasising the emotion and portray a pitiful and empathetic feeling to our audience. These close ups worked well as we had a lot of establishing shots of settings and not many variations, so these subtle but affective shots filled that gap.

In our video we used a lot of point of view shots, mainly due to the implication that time is passing as our character goes on a long journey to find the object of desire, and to be able to show a realistic setting with real ordinary people on an ordinary day just to add more realism and on some levels make the video easier o relate to as we didn’t want a fantasised narrative like in films where everyone lives happily ever after.Here are some of the main point of view shots used throughout our video.

Intertextuality was another huge feature of ours, a convention most commonly used with humorous and parodic music videos so this was a necessity for us to get this right! As this song and band are well related to the ‘Shrek’ franchise or films, we had to somehow incorporate subtle Shrek hints occasionally in our video and we did.First of all, when our character is in his bedroom, the TV is playing the second Shrek film, secondly as he goes into HMV the DVD’s he looks at are all Shrek films, and then again in the flashback one of the school boys is drawing Shrek doodles onto the white board. All these made us be able to intertextualise and in some aspects mock the stereotypical relation between this song and Shrek.

To challenge conventions of music videos and media pieces, there was one main aspect we didn’t include in our video or planning, we touched on it in our research but never pursued the idea…

Live/Band Shots

We didn’t include this at all due to the inconvenience of having to lip-sync the song and then relate it to our narrative. As we knew we had an already complicated enough story line with all of its locations and props we didn’t see it necessary to have extra clips of someone trying to lip-sync the song.This could have made the video seem ‘tacky’ or unprofessional as we knew we wouldn’t have access to professional equipment or band members to be able to cleverly manipulate the audience into thinking that they were really playing.Along side that argument, we weren’t quite sure whether this may also distract from the narrative, as there would be so much more to focus on throughout the 3 minutes. A possibility was also that we wouldn’t be able to keep up the parody in scenes like this where someone would be singing, without it looking over the top or just inappropriate to the songs meaning and our chosen narrative. Overall, the idea of live footage was a definite no. Although almost all of the music videos we looked at as a group and individually had a band playing occasionally and cropping up now and then, so we challenged this convention and our feedback suggested that the audience actually preferred there to be no band playing in our specific video alone.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary

texts?

Here are our final 3 products together, as you can see there are similarities and differences between them all.Let me explain…

Digi-PakThe front cover of the digipak gives clues to many parts of our video;The skateboard is a clear main feature as it is central to the image, along side this the smart polished black shoes are oppositional to the skateboard, as they have contradicting connotations. The skateboard represents youth, fun and speed. Where as the shoes represent formality, adulthood and looking respectable. These two items aren’t seen as ‘normal’ when put together, so having this as the largest part of the image will draw in our audience to question and hopefully intrigue.

The bright colours and high saturation of the image was deliberate to relate back to Smash mouth and their use of bold colours and cartoonish style album covers.

The fonts used for the titles we retrieved from dafont.com as none of the custom fonts on Photoshop fitted what we wanted. We needed a playful and fun font and found this one (Summer Lovin’) and it fits perfectly with our cartoon style.We wanted the titles to slot in with the

This is the first thing you will see once you’ve opened up one of the flaps of the digipak, this simple collage of images of production and main parts of the video its self will encourage the audience who are either looking at the digipak or who have bought it, not only to listen to the song and track list, but also to watch and engage in the music video.This with addition of the front cover already gives massive indications that the music video for this album is a huge necessity.Which would make sense for the audience to research and find the music video easily on YouTube if it was professionally labelled.

This collage doesn’t just show clips from the music video, it has insight to the production.Which is exclusive to the digipak, contributing to the promotional package.

These images haven’t been edited as brightly as the rest of the digipak has due to this being a complicated piece.I believe this as a whole is complicated enough without adding effects or increasing saturation.Even though the colours aren’t as vibrant I still believe it would have detracted from the collage.

Here is our inner 3 part centre of the digipak, this image is the un-edited version.This image is a panorama shot of an open square in York. This is near where our character buys his flowers and next to the Shambles where he walks to find his love sat with another man.

We chose to do a panoramic shot as we knew we wanted to fill the inner flaps with one image, and a panoramic shot would do the trick. We used an iPhone 5 to get this picture as we knew our camera would be unable to take a panoramic picture, then uploaded it to Photoshop and edited it like how we did with the Front cover. So we upped the levels of contrast to make the shadows and lighter areas pop, then increasing the saturation we were able to get a bold and unusually bright image which worked really well complimenting the front cover.

This contiguous theme of bold and unnaturally bright colours really helped bring the digipak together without making it look childish or unattractive.On one side of the digipak we will have the music video and on the other a video of production and outtakes.

Here is the very back of the digipak, this has the track list written on it and nothing else, we decided not to over complicate the back as we didn’t want to give too much away as the intention was to make the audience want to pick up the digipak and open it.

The background for the track list has a clear correlation to the magazine advert.By using this crumpled lined paper image we were able not only link to the magazine advert but also to link to the flashback where our school students were making paper balls and throwing them, this simple but affective background indicates a youthful or messy style where something isn’t quite right or its rough just like the paper balls.

Aside from the background being simple and easy to understand, the font for the track titles couldn’t be complicated neither. So we used a simple round font with black so it could be easily read from close up and at adistance, also having a plain or simple back cover Is complimentary with the bold front as it has an Equal balanced contrast between each other.

The spines of our digipak were also white, so Easy to read from a distance and will contradictThe cover and internals o the overall digipak.We were going to use one colour but we couldn’tFind one that would bring in all aspects and allOf the colours used throughout the digipak.

Magazine AdvertHere is our final magazine advert.Again, keeping it simple yet intriguing, we applied minimal amounts onto this page.What is clear though is the cover of the digipak is being revealed but has been made to look like it has been drawn straight onto the paper as the lines are still visible.

Again we used the Summer Lovin’ font from the digipaks title to advertise the title on the advert. This just made a subtle link between the two ancillary texts.

Using the lined paper as our background just as we did with the back cover of the digipak, had connotations linking to school, youth and as this paper is scrunched up and messy this could represent a rebellious attitude or a fun, easy living style which can be understood with our target audience.

Having the HMV and website link straight to our video at the bottom give a professional edge to the final outcome, as the adverts we had seen were commonly supported by HMV.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilfPtq-2BHU

We received very positive feedback about our music video which is always lovely to hear, although hearing that the audience enjoyed the video was just the start.

Our first viewing of our music video was by two of our college friends who we brought in to watch the first showing. The link to this video is at the bottom or this slide.This video was mainly used to see the facial reactions of our small audience, we wanted to see at what points they laughed or questioned the video or reacted in any slight way.The results we got from this were great, we got laughter, we got disappointment at the end where there is no real happy ending and we got occasional questions throughout the video which we were able to answer on the spot.

Over all, our first audience really enjoyed the video,as you can see there are small compliments throughoutand lots of smiles which is exactly what we wanted tosee, these 2 friends are similar to our target audienceso we hope this is the same reaction we would get fromour target audience.

From then on we gathered lots of people together to view our video. Individually we went to friends and family to see what they liked, disliked, thought we could improve and if they understood our intentions.

Everyone we showed really enjoyed our video we got comments back such as;• It’s very clever, the story• I like the way you’ve edited it all together• I like your characters and how funny he acts• That’s a really sad ending I really didn’t see that coming, bless him

But for constructive criticism we got feedback that mentioned we should:• Not over do slow or fast motion editing• Too much Point Of View shots • He travels a lot which could become repetitive

This feedback was very helpful as we were able tolook back over our video and point out features weWould have changed or developed.Overall, our audience feedback was very positive andMade all of the hard work and extra detail we putIn to production and editing well worth it.

As you can see we got many likes and lots of views of our music video on YouTube which was the most common platform to view music videos from.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction

and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Research Stage:Our main uses of technologies for the research stage were:

The camera; to film our audience interviews to get a more personal response to our questions.

Google Maps; To be able to view our idealised locations without having to trek out and find them we were able to easily see them in google maps.

Survey Monkey; We were able to interview a larger range of audience to get fast results using a website designed specifically for surveys and is reliable.

Premiere: To be able to put all of our footage together to create one package or audience interviews with ease. And in some aspects we were able to get a little practise before our editing process for the final video.

Planning:

For the planning stage this was when we needed to gather all our ideas and information together to really crack down on the base of an amazing music video. So we needed to use different technologies to help us construct, although a lot of this stage we achieved using just pen and paper to draw out mind maps, lists and designs.

We had to scan a lot of our written notes and story boards through the photocopier which was new to the whole group, and after several tries we finally got our scans.We also used social media to communicate as a group, and send photos of our Development and scans as well. Facebook was a great way to easy make a groupAnd share work we had done in class with each other.

Construction:

In the construction stages of production we mainly used Adobe Premiere to Make our digipak, magazine advert and video itself. With the help of Photoshop to edit images and put the final pieces together on our 2 ancillary texts.

Photoshop allowed us to edit either subtly or massively with the digipak weCould brighten up and adjust images to relate to our artists and to matchOther bright sections of the digipak such as the back cover, middle image andThe collage was all done on Photoshop, taking each image at a time, sizing itDown then aligning it with the rest of the images.

Evaluation:

For evaluation, the main part of gathering everything together in a technological way would be using an online blog to place all of my development somewhere where it is easily accessible and I could work on it through multiple technology devices such as my phone, laptop or college computer.

I chose WordPress as in my A2 year I used BlogSpot and had many issues with uploading work onto it and I found the layout a little immature, where as I believe WordPress has a cleaner and mature edge to it, and I haven't had many problems with uploading or editing work through the process of production.

Slide share has been another large element When talking about uploading PowerPoints suchAs this one to my blog, I found it fairly simpleTo use but gave me some problems with Embed codes which I over came.

PowerPoint and word were places where I would commonly type up my notes and final pieces of work before putting them onto my blog as I found them easy to use after using them all the way through my education. I was able to personalise my work and adapt the fonts and layout to suit me and my own work.