Evaluation Q1- Nicole Jones
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our music video follows some already established music video forms and conventions. Andrew Goodwin described how music videos will follow certain conventions in his books ‘Dancing in the distraction factory’. The narrative format and structure consists of mostly narrative with a few small performance scenes where the main character of the video is singing, this is similar to many slow pop songs/ballad which tend to tell a story. One convention of a music video is that there is a link between the lyrics and visuals, this can be seen in our music video as the visuals are telling the story of the song and what the lyrics are saying. Our use of camera angles and editing also follows the common conventions of many music videos as we have used many close ups of the artist, this usually happens because record labels demand that the music video includes a lot of close up shots of the artist.
In many music videos there is a constant feature of the notion of looking, this technique can be seen in our music video in a shot where the artist is looking at herself in the mirror. Also the notion of looking can help differentiate different characters in a music video and help the audience connect with what is presented. We have done this in our music video as the artist looks directly at the camera which acts as a way of bringing the audience into the video as it seems that the viewer is being recognised directly. However, one convention that our music video deviates from is that there is usually intertextuality used from films and tv, fashion or other music videos. 
Some real life music video examples that we have been influenced by are Katy Perry’s ‘Thinking of you’ and Leona Lewis’ ‘Bleeding Love’. This is because both videos are set in a house which was what we planned to do, and ‘Thinking of you’ has a very similar storyline to our video as well as many similar shots, for example, close ups of the artist and the artist singing while looking out a window. Also both of these videos contain conventions of a slow pop song/ballad, such as, slow motion, a sad narrative, long transitions and fade to black. And you can see we have clearly been influenced by these videos and we have many of these in out own music video.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback? Essay Number 3.
As a group we devised a series of 10 questions, which we implemented into a questionnaire in order to gain feedback from our 15-person target audience. These questions included ‘Is our media piece easy to follow and do you understand what is going on all the time?’ ‘How could the ending to our media piece be improved?’ and ‘Rate the continuity of our media piece out of 10?’
The main feedback we received from our audience was that. The end of the music video was confusing and hard to follow, because the same actor was used as the Army general as well as for the Funeral Usher. This was done due to the inability of being able to use a 3rd external actor in our media piece.
Our feedback also recorded that even though our song choice ran well alongside the portrayal of our music video. It was a very depressing choice of music, and they found it hard to engage with the song during the 2nd and 3rd viewings of the music video.
The majority of the feedback reported that the realistic acting created a valid authenticity about our work. Which allowed the viewer to easily engage with the media piece. However they felt that the costumes worn where of poor quality and therefore portrayed an unprofessional look about our work. After acknowledging this point we concluded that in the future we would possibly try to borrow more realistic army type clothing in order to convey a more realistic feel about our work.
80% of our feedback reported that the transitions used allowed our media piece to accurately flow. However some felt that the wide variety of transitions made our work look slightly un-professional, due to the slow pace of our media production.
All of our feedback reported that, our use of flashbacks was easily distinguishable in our media piece, due to the use of black and white screening running alongside the use of slow motion in the clip.
To conclude upon we received feedback that suggested that our story line was well thought out which is conveyed through the use of many different scene’s portrayed through a variety of different camera angels. However the majority of the audience felt it was a rather boring story line and therefore wouldn’t be interested in watching any further productions by our media group.
Overall I am happy with the final outcome of my music video, after taking into account the £0 budget and poor quality recording equipment. I also feel we where well organised in being able to organise recording date’s where we had to work around our external actors. As well as being able to navigate our own way to the house of one of my fellow group members, on a number of separate occasions.
Evaluation Q.3 – Nicole Jones
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
In our initial target audience research we decided that our target audience would be teenagers, this is because we feel that ballads/slow pop songs would appeal to them more. We found this was true when we researched other music videos in a similar genre to ours, for example, Katy Perry’s ‘Thinking of You’ music video has a very similar storyline to ours and uses the same type of camera techniques.
We first did some research into the demographic for our music video by conducting research into music video channels and we also did a quiz called ‘Find your tribe’ which helped us see what kind of teenager we would be targeting. And using all of this information we made up a profile for an example of what we thought our target audience would be.
We created questionnaries to find out if people understood and liked our initial idea for our music video, with questions such as, ‘Do you think the idea of our video will work?’ and we found that 5/6 people thought that it would. Another question was ‘Do you understand the meaning of our song?’ and we found that 5/6 people was asked did, and this is important to us people are music video is telling the story of the lyrics.
To try to make our video appeal to our target audience we tried to position the auidence to sympathise with our main character, and we did this by making sure we had a lot of close ups of her so that they could understand what she was feeling. From our audience feedback we found that the majority of them were able to follow the story presented in our video however some didn’t understand what happened towards the end. We also found that we needed to add a bit more to the story to hold people’s attention for the whole song, because of this we tried to add more scenes in and we decided to shorten the video by about a minute.
With our digipak and magazine advert we tried to keep them similar to our video so we created a theme that ran throuhg all of them so that the audience would be able to see that they are connected. Overall from our audience feedback we found that the people we asked liked our theme and said we made good choices with the background and fonts. Therefore I think that our end product meets our OCR brief as I think our audience would be interested in watching our music video and be interested in our advert and digipak.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks? Essay number 2.
During the production of our music video we as a group aimed to target a mainstream audience, in order to establish as wide an audience as possible.
We used several representation methods in order to target our Pop/ Rock type audience, we also used credits at the beginning of our video piece to establish the name and artist of the song. We’ve also devised a digi-pak and CD cover illustrating the name and artist of the band, as a form of promotion in order to attract an audience.
We used a large font in order to fill up a large proportion of the page. We also used black colour writing in order to reflect a boldness upon the white background. Both of the protagonists are pictured centrally upon the main cover and poster to illlutsrate that they are the main people involved in the music video. Broken is written in a slightly larger font than that of Atoa as we felt it was of more importance for it to be recognized upon the front cover.
For the digi-pak we used multiple branding elements, we have a long shot of the 2 protagonists from our media piece, below the words of ‘Broken’ and ‘Atoa’. Based upon a white back ground, with black lines spiraling across the surface of the cover. Upon both sides of the digi-pak we have maintained a color scheme consisting of a white back ground, with black lines spiraling across the face of it. Then on the back of the cover, we have a picture of the female protagonist next to which positions the name of the 10 songs by the artist, moving down the page in an horizontal type fashion.
We used the same front page for our Poster as we used on our digi-pak, in order to maintain a similar ideology across all of our work. However we implemented, advertisements, star ratings and an email address on top of our poster.
We only used 1 cover throughout our work to show similarities in the genre of our music, and to work against the conventions that you may normally except in this genre of music
The main influence of the digipak came from the music video itself, as it was a mellow and depressive genre of music, we therefore decided to use an un-idyllic picture of the couple to portray, the un-happy feel about the song.
In order to establish as great an audience as possible we maintained the same font and color throughout all of work to gain band recognition. As they are a relatively unknown band and therefore strong endorsement is needed to promote them to a wider audience.
No instruments where used in the making of our video, however sounds effects where used in the production in order to increase the sound level in particular area’s of the song.
In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions? Essay number 1.
My media product is a music video, created to portray the song Broken by Atoa, a pop/rock genre of music.
As a group we used 2 external actors along side my self in order to create the video, we used a tri-pod to accurately position the Video recording device as well as a Camera in which we used to take regular pictures of our filming destinations.
We recorded approximately 12 minutes of footage in 2 main destinations; the house of one of the group member’s and the ‘Aquadrome’ nearby.
We used a range of different camera angle’s and movements throughout our piece of recording, in order to convey the best possible representation, of a depressive and un-happy setting. We used close up shot’s to portray the feelings of the actor’s. As a group we used a range of mid-shots to view the actor within their immediate surrounding’s, we also used long shot’s to view the actor(s) within their surrounding area in order to create a better feel for what is currently going on within the scene.
Goodwin’s analysis conveys the theory on how the protagonist portrays the same facial expression throughout all of the performance parts of the song, in order to express her feelings of sadness and desperation.
We choose a song with a relatively slow tempo for our music piece, which allowed us to use long cuts between shots in order to acquire match on action throughout the piece of filming.
Our music video was devised to convey the saddening portrayal of a widowed women, who recently lost her husband at war. Special lighting effects, where used alongside a couple of diegetic sound enhancements to portray this genre of music video.
Through the use of Goodwin’s analysis. The long cut’s used portray the convention of a saddening and depressive music video.
A typical reflection shot is used to view the protagonist through a mirror at a variety of different angle’s which follows’ the trait of what is going on in the song, at the particular moment in time
Actual food was cooked and eaten in order to ensure that our piece of media footage looked as authentic as possible.
Army style clothing was worn to create the authenticity of a army type man walking to the door to inform the protagonist, of the death of her husband.
A happy scene of the couple sitting on the sofa together was shot, from both a long shot as well as a Point of view shot to portray the happy times that the couple shared, which conveys a contradiction to later scene’s. It also portrays a feeling of normality, which exists within most healthy relationships.
Dark like clothing was worn by all 3 actors in the music video to help portray the feel of an un-idyllic atmosphere, to collaborate with the genre of music.
A typical stair camera shot, was shot from both behind and in front of the protagonist in order to view, her from another of different angles, so to allow the footage to flow whilst ensuring that the continuity of the footage is maintained throughout. We decided to use this shot as it showed the main actor as being miserable and un-happy, moping around the house.
Throughout my media recording on the whole we have chosen to follow media conventions rather than work against them, in order to convey the clear message of the media video to it’s target audience.
Evaluation Question 3: Jessica Stocks
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Our target audience for our music video was mainly teenage girls as we felt that they were most likely to listen to slow pop ballads and enjoy them. When completing our target audience research, it was evident that we had made the right decision in making this our target audience, as mainly girls said that they listened to this genre of music. Katy Perry’s ‘Thinking of you’ is a music video which is similar to ours as it has a similar story line and we have used some of the same camera angles, for example, close ups and mid shots. This video appealed to us because we liked the use of flashbacks and that certain scenes were in black and white to show the past.
To appeal to our target audience we used both narrative and performance scenes. We felt that with the song we had chosen, we could make up a story line which could complement the mood of the song. We used close ups of the main character so the audience could identify that she is the one they should be following. The audience are positioned to feel sympathetic towards this character and I think the use of close ups to show her emotions, allows the audience to feel this way. In the editing stage we used black and white on the flashback scenes so it was clear to the audience that these were flashbacks of the past. The locations were everyday places in which the audience could relate to, including a house and outside a café.
We’ve made two different sets of questionnaires throughout the process of making our music video; one was completed by our peers to see what song they prefered when we had narrowed it down to two songs. We asked them what they thought of our concept for the video and we got positive feedback. Everyone seemed to like our ideas and thought they complemented the mood of the song. The second questionaire was used after completing our music video, to see if our peers had any criticism or if they didn’t understand anything.
The majority of people who watched our music video liked what we had done. They understood what the storyline was and understood what mood we were trying to portray. The ending of our video had mixed reviews; some understanding what we were trying to imply and others didn’t. When completing audience feedback, we were given a few suggestions which we took on board and added in to our video, such as, more close ups of the main character. It was good to show fellow students our work to see what they thought of our video and if they had any opinions.
We completed audience research by using websites including www.findyourtribe.co.uk and we also researched into what music channels would host our genre of song.
When we developed our magazine advert and digipak, we continued with the theme, by using the same background and fonts. This helped keep the continuity of all our products and made it easier for the audience to make the connection between all three products. We used a black and white background and font which made the characters stand out. This was something which in our audience feedback, people commented on and liked. I think our video is one in which people would go out and buy as by looking at the digipak or magazine advert, I think the audience would be intrigued to what the song sounds like. Therefore, I think that, technically and aesthetically, our end products meet the OCR brief. I think that people could watch our video, enjoy it and see similar elements that you would find in real media products.
Evaluation Q.4 – Nicole Jones
How did you use new media technologies in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages?
Before we started to make our music video we had to research other music videos to see what the characteristics and conventions were common in them, and to do this we used websites such as Youtube, to search for other music videos that matched our particular genre. We then used WordPress to keep up to date progress meetings and to post any research, essays or any other work related to our music video. We also created a powerpoint to present our initial ideas to the rest of the class.
During the video production we were able to master the camera controls and tripod successfully with only a few problems. When we looked back at what we had filmed we found that in some shots there was soft focus and lighting issues, and in another shot we realised that you were able to see the tripod in the shot. To resolve these problems we refilmed parts of our video whilst making sure that we focused the shot right and removed all of our equipment out of the shot.
For editing our music video we used a programme called Final Cut Pro Express, we were quite familiar with this programme as we had used it the year before therefore we didn’t have many problems with it and found it easy to use. We imported all of the footage we shot, put it into a timeline and then cut is down whilst adding in different transitions to make the video flow. We only had any problems when we found we had to cut down our video by about a minute, as it was difficult to keep some parts of the video in time with the music. Finally, to create our digipak and magazine advert we used photoshop to put it all together, using different brushes to create a theme that ran through our products. At first we found it quite difficult to use this programme as we hadn’t needed to use it before but we slowly mastered the controls. As these programmes were available for us to use at school it made it a lot easier for us to complete this product as we could access it at anytime and spend free periods in school working on it.
Once we had finished with editing our video we did our evaluation. For this we used http://www.wordpress.com to post our drafts and finished work to our blog and we also used a Flip camera to film ourselves talking through our evaluation as a group and then posted it onto our blog with our question one. Finally, we used soundcloud to upload and post recordings of ourselves individually talking about each of our evaluation questions.
Evaluation Q.2 – Nicole Jones
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
A brand is the identity of a specific product, service, or business and a brand can take many forms, including a name, sign, symbol, color combination or slogan. We have done this throughout our whole project by using a constant colour scheme and use of the same pictures throughout so that the audience can identifiy it as our product.
Before we created our digipak and magazine advert we looked at real life examples of these, such as, magazine covers that include an artist and front and back covers of real albums by artists we were influenced by.
When creating our digipak and magazine advert we took many close up pictures of our two main characters in the video against different colour backgrounds, these were then cropped using photoshop and used on both the digipak and magazine advert. The background of both was then made by downloading different brushes to use in photoshop and as a group we decided which one would suit the theme of our video. A broken effect was used and we then decided between different types of font which we thought wouold fit our brand. On the back and other sides of our digipack the same broken effect is used along with another close up picture of the artist. The same pictures are used on both the digipak and magazine advert so that the audience can see that they are connected.
Our colour scheme and broken effect runs through our brand as we felt this fit in with the vibe of our music video, as it doesn’t have a lot of different colours because this has connotations of being happier. Overall we used the same theme throughout so that the auidence could recognise this as a brand and associate it with the artist.
Once the magazine advert was designed we added in star ratings and quotes from other magazines to make it seem more realistic, this shows that we have been influenced by real magazine adverts as we have similar characteristics in ours, such as, a close up of the artist, ratings from other magazines, a website and record label logos. Similarly our digipak follows the established forms and conventions as we researched what the common characteristics of digipaks were.
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