My Evaluation

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

Think about:

·      The products you have analysed and gained inspiration from.

·      Goodwin’s points

·      Genre of product

Our media product uses lots of typical forms and convention of real media products. Examples of this would be that it has a narrative running through the length of the music video and that it has lots of close up shot (and other types) of the artist singing which is conventional in about 99% of music videos, its conventional as companies want the singer to be the main focus of the video therefore there is a lot more shots in ratio to the narrative shots. Although our music video does use a lot of conventions it also develops and challenges the forms and conventions. The major way in which are product does this is that through out the whole video it is split screen which helps to tell the narrative as well as keeping main focus on the singer, it also helps to keep the viewer constantly interested as the images are always changing in different ways and into different parts of the screen. This is a different way to show the video, as most music videos will be full screen, although there are a few videos about which use split screen it a bit more original than your conventional video’s, by using this technique it also makes it more original to our genre

Demonstrates genre characteristics

Relationship between visuals and lyrics in parts.

Relationship between music and video (quicker on the beat etc.)

Lots of close ups of the artist as the labels would demand it.

Inter-textual reference to films.

How Effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary (Magazine advert / Digi pack cover) texts?

Think about:

·      How all 3 work together as a promo package

·      What image do they create of the artist

·      How are they successful at attracting the target audience

I believe that the combination of our main product, magazine advert and digi pack work together very well. I think it works well for 3 main reasons. One, it interlinks with one another such as the colour schemes and the shot types (lots of the artist).  Two, the style in which we designed them in are inter-linking; such as the fonts we decided on and the way we dressed the artist to fit in with the conventions of our genre. And three, I believe that it would appeal to a larger target audience, as its not to gender/age specific therefore hopefully attracting more people.

The main product and ancillary texts help to create an indie feel to the artist by the effects we used on the CD cover, this also crosses over into the music as this was the kind of genre it was, so it would have been unconventional and not really appropriate to take on a different style.

What have you learnt from you feedback?

·      Feedback on initial pitch

·      On your rough cut

·      On finished product

·      Peers and teachers

We learnt a great deal from all of the feedback we received. When we were doing the initial pitch we received a lot of ideas from other classmates as well as the teacher combined with a few of our own which could be used. When we had got to the rough cut point the main feedback we got was that the video was to indecisive as we weren’t sure as to the definite style that we wanted to use as we were torn between using the split screen, no split screen or split screen for parts of the video. After most the class agreeing that split screen would look better we decided to go with this and got on with making the whole video in split screen – a significant point in the process of making our product. When we had finished the product and shown the rest of the class the overall feedback was that they had liked it and thought that the split screen worked really well and helped to keep you interested through out the whole video. There were a couple of comments where they said that there was parts of it such as shots or narrative which could be slightly improved but nothing which was a major floor.

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

·      All the software (Blogger/Photoshop/Final Cut)

·      HD cameras / stills

·      In what ways did you use these products and how did they help you to prepare and create a successful product?

Blogger was a big influence and help in the process of planning the entire product as it allowed us to jot down ideas and pictures/ videos etc. which where an influence on our product.

Photoshop was probably the programme, which was used a bit less, however it allowed us to do unique and interesting images which otherwise, would not be possible, this was key as it allowed us to link ideas in to the front cover which were in the video.