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More Evaluation Q1-Q4

Q1 -In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media texts?


Our media product uses the forms and conventions of a real media text as we stuck to using elements of a real music video when filming our own. 

Andrew Goodwins features of a music video:

• A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals
• A relationship between the music and the visuals
• Particular genres may have own video style e.g. rock would be a live stage performance
• Lots of close ups of the artist
• reference to voyeurism - particularly to females.
• Intertextual references

Our music video uses 4 out of a potential 6.

When deciding what type of music video to produce we firstly picked an artist and thought about if we wanted to use conventional themes for his music or challenge them. We decided to use Jack Johnson as our artist and we chose to stick to his forms. Jack Johnson is typically portrayed as a laid back kind of person and who's music is about having a good time and enjoying life. Therefore we decided to have our music video as Jack Johnson playing a busker, singing on the street for a bit of spare change while following round two friends as they enjoy themselves, thus developing already set forms and conventions. 

We used close-ups of the artist, an instrument being played in time with the music, we made a link between the lyrics and the visuals the best we could, our genre was typically the artist's own which we developed and stuck to and we made a link between the music and the visuals.

Q2- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?


For our ancillary text we used the same features of our music video, we used pictures taken with the same clothing as the music video, we used a close up of the artist in the music video as our digi-pack poster, this creating a link between the two so that people wanting to buy the record will notice it straight away from what they have seen in the music video.

End of project review

Ideas for presentation of the evaluation

We have been told that, most students answer the questions on their blog. As with AS, the exam board will require us to use visual examples whenever possible and balance the amount of visuals and text. Increasingly however, the exam board are looking for creativity-creative ways that students can present the evaluation questions.

Other ideas could be:

A voiceover over of our final cut of the video that discusses the use of forms and conventions
A post-it animation that describes our use of technology
A 'vox pop' video giving examples of audience feedback in which we recieved
An audio interview with the target audience about their response to our work
Screen grabs of the online community's reaction to our work e.g. Youtube/Facebook comments
Use of free online software e.g. Prezi or Wix adding creativity!!!

Evaluation for Q4

Q4-How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? 

We used a wide range of technological equipments and applications for our media products in the construction and production covering these elements;

§ Final Cut Pro – To edit all our footage for our music videos i.e cuts and transitions
§ Soundtrack Pro – To upload and incorporate our soundtrack of ‘Rodeo Clowns’ MP3 version
§ Photoshop – To edit our posters and album covers with fonts, logos and images
§ HD camcorders – For high quality recording and footage of our music videos, as well as our images for our digi-paks
§ Tri-pod – For steady camera movements and various angle shots including; high, low, close-ups, pans, zooms, track and establishing shots
§ Mac PC – to process all our work onto

This question like Q2 and Q3 will also be answered in a webcam blog form, where one member of our group will talk through and discuss the points mentioned above in a more critical aspect.

PLEASE SEE COMMENT BELOW

Evaluation for Q3

Q3-What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In response to this question, we must refer to our feedback from our rough cuts and peer reviews and user comments we received during the process of our construction and the final production stages of our media products which included;

The critical comments -

"No storyline"

"Visuals do not match the speed of the sound track"

"Various transitions may need to be used to eliminate boredom effect"

To the positive comments after the recovery and the intake from the criticisms - 

"Excellent sense of story; page peel etc"

"Various shots used, continuity, angles"

"Great actors, realism and relate-able"

PLEASE SEE COMMENT BELOW

Evaluation for Q2

Q2- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

For this questionwe will be answering this question in relation to our media products and how we achieved to keep the link between them in a form of a documentary such as a self web cam blog with added examples to explain our point. The brief points in which we will cover are;

The key elements of his covers that are linked to our original artist + our actor include elements of;

Nature - The large tree at the centre of this album cover represents this very straight forwardly and so in order for our Media Products to be successful, we included the symbolical features including the theme of nature and its surroundings which represents our original artist (Jack Johnson).

Guitar - Like most artists they know how to play a particular instrument, whereas Jack Johnson is concerned he plays the guitar as seen in the blackout image held by the man, and so we also included an image of our 
actor with guitar in our digi-pack on one of the inlay panel.


(Aesthetics) - The colours used in this existing album are; pastel yellow and black, these colours represent his image very boldly, but we tried to achieve a similar effect by adding warmth within the images editied and manipulated using Photoshop. The blackout image of the artist, guitar and nature was a consideration to be included as we use these components as the base, working our way around it, altering and adding specific conventions in order to promote him to our intended target audience.

We kept a consistant theme within our Music video and the ancillary texts, by keeping the same, text, font, style, colour theme and images (taken through our music video) to create a realtionship bewteen the media 
products so that it keeps the audience familar with the artist.

Used Conversions                       Developed conventions by making it:

MAGAZINE ADVERT

 

One limitation is that , we did not exactly challenge the conversions for our magazine cover although one might argue that , that is difficult to accomplish unless the type of music is extreme or an eccentric artist that is arguably  allowed by social norms to push moral boundaries e.g Lady Gaga.

PLEASE SEE COMMENT BELOW

Evaluation - Q1 Useful theories and concepts

Now that the practical side is complete, we now need to focus on our evaluation and prepare answering the four questions in a creative format, the questions being the following;

Q1-In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media texts?

Theory and concepts related to the form and conventions of music video;

· Stephen Hill article from the Media Magazine-‘How Video didn’t kill the Radio star’
· Andrew Goodwin’s features of the music video from ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’
· Post-modernism-the idea that everything is borrowed
· Intertextuality
· Genre-does this concept apply to music video anyway?!
· Pastiche
· Parody
· Industry conventions-any rules for a first video? Video as marketing device.
· Impact of the DIY aesthetic and ‘YouTube culture’ on the form
· Relevant print terms for the ancillary texts

For this question our group will be preparing to answer this question together, we are also planning to go to the scenes in which we went to capture the footage of our music video such as the pier, sat in front of the sea
and sun discussing how our media product mainly used the conventions and forms of real media text, typical conventions used are;

§ Lip-synching
§ Urban/modern locations
§ Use of props i.e. instruments – Guitar
§ Artist or actors present
§ Routines and rehearsed acts/dance

Janice Mutema : 

This is where the lyrics establish a general feeling and a sense of subject rather than a meaning. The tempo of the music often drives the editing. The Genre might be reflected in types of mis-en-scene, themes, performance,camera and editing styles. Camerawork, has a major impact on meaning, the movement, angle and shot distance all play a part in the representation of the artist/band (for example the use of close-ups will show inferiority and importance). Editing the most common form is fast-cut montage, rendering many images impossible to grasp on first viewing, so ensuring multiple viewing. Often enhancing the editing are digital effects, which play with the original images to offer a different type of pleasure to the audience. Intertextuality, not all viewers will recognise a reference which would not detract them from their pleasure in the text itself,but if he viewer was to realise the reference it should increase the audience's engagement regarding the product. Lastly exhibitionism, this is where the powerful independent female artists portray a image where the woman is being sexually provocative and apparently in control of, and inviting a sexual gaze.

Slide By Janice Mutema 

PLEASE SEE COMMENT BELOW

Construction

Practical

Slowly we are starting to put our final production of our music video together, last week we completed all the filming as we were delayed due to horrid weather conditions. With all of our footage captured and edited with various transitions, edits and effects we managed to achieve what we initially had planned via the storyboard, not much changed at all though the theme at the start was going to about two couples, but then shifted to friendships which we believe will appeal to a wider and global audience.

As time is running, we have one week left to accomplish and complete the following;

• Music Promo Video
• Cover for its release 
• Magazine advert

We are nearly at the final stage of the music video, from cutting various and lengthy footage in which we did not need or found to be unnecessary to include, to adding many transitions from dissolves to fade in and page peels etc, as well as including slow motion effects, reverse rewinding transition. We have to also double check if the soundtrack matches the visuals as this is very important and can not lack, especially with the scenes of our 'artist' himself when he mimes the choruses, it was very tricky to match the correct choruses but we managed to achieve this after a few struggling attempts.

Once that is checked over, we then need to render the whole sequence and export the project as a video link which can be also viewed as a separate file to watch. We then need to collect all of our images from which we have taken at various stages of our shooting, to then manipulate the images including texts, fonts, logos and positioning each of these conventions into its appropriate place for a very appealing, professional magazine advert in which the audience can take in and use this poster to relate and  identify the album cover at many music stores, and do the same to create 4 sides of an album cover to include; front, back and the inlay panels.

Rough Cut

We have now done the majority of the filming, and so the footage we have at the moment, we are going to edit and add various effects including slow motion, cropping, sepia, black and white etc. However our filming is not complete we have left out and came up with better ideas to include after being re-viewed by our peers, comments included; no storyline, does not link, speed etc. So to improve our footage so far we need to do more filming, scheduled for next week, and add effects such as page peel to make the music video as a story of events and chapters included.

In order to achieve these we will be using the applications listed below, to help us create and produce a professionally, high quality promotional package for our music video;

Mac PC;
Final Cut Pro
Soundtrack Pro
Photo shop