Audience Feedback Evaluation

Here is my audience feedback from two people who looked at my video

Name: Mat Rees
Age: 18
Job: Student

This boy just likes to have a fun time, this is my target audience. However as i originally planned there was meant to be some narrative however, mat doesnt care about that he just wants something entertaining to watch when listening to his favourite song. He said; “The video is very confusing on first viewing however watching it a couple of times over its clear that there is a story ery similar to the one you explained to me before watching it a second time (i told him about it after first viewing). When i was watching it, i also noticed that the video was orientated around the song because everytime the bass drum kicks in it changes to a different bit”.

This helps me out a lot, because it is clear that he noticed that the video was more for just watching than reading into. This is good and i hope that most other people in my target audience will see it this way.

The second person is way out of my target audience, he is my alternative audience who see a different reading in the narrative of the video.

Name: Mark Pearce
Age: 46
Job: Royal Air Force Officer

This is my dad and trust me he is definately not biased. He seems to try to find a story in the clip when there are parts where there were none intentionally put in, he should be doing media with all the connotations he finds without calling them that. I talked to him about this and he had this to say about the product; “This video is very eerie, in saying that i mean that the gas masked character is clearly meant to send chills througout you. He has an aura of his own destruction and mischief about him without even needing to be shown smashing objects. I think that the story is meant to make it believeable and it is meant to make the viewer become more involved in the video, this is because they will feel like part of it”.

This is definately useful for me as he clearly has found and alternative reading in the video, he mentions that the viewer is meant to feel involved which is close to the effect i wanted but i wanted the symbolic side of it to be the effective part not the narrative.

The video interview should just about conclude this.

pt1

pt2

Thanks for loooking!!!

Film- Voice over part three :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-fRzFGQnJk

Finally, Enjoy

Film- Voice over part two :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYwVRB_sXho

Enjoy

final film

Video With Commentary

Here it is, it might still be processing so just leave it be for a little while!!!

Film – Voice over part one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_AwNQKdZPI

Enjoy

evaluation

media evaluation

media evaluation

1.  As you can see we have studied a wide range of real media products. This was all through research to help us grasp the conventions of a real media product.

All of the music videos that we studied where in the same genre as ours which was ‘female pop’ music. We wanted to study these to see what real media products where like and what we needed to consider.

The music videos we analysed were very useful as all of them were to do with break ups and they related a lot to our media product so some of our ideas also developed though out this process.

We found a pop music magazine advert from Paloma Faith which there was a lot to take in however we feel that we were trying to portray something completely different therefore we should have tried to find another magazine advert to analyse.

It was very hard trying to find o digi-pack cover as none of us could find a digi-pack therefore we just used a CD cover.

As you can see on the left we have the real media conventions of a music video and there on the right we have what we have applied to our music video.

We really stuck to our comfort zone with the music video and we didn’t try and challenge any of the conventions. We stuck to these conventions as we didn’t want to drive away from our target audience by creating something out of the box.

We both feel that we had a narrative that everyone could follow and it wasn’t complicated however we feel that a lot of audience would feel that they would be able to relate to it. From our audience feedback we found that our audience agreed with us.

We did have a variation of locations e.g. the train station, house. Woods, street etc. however throughout the production when we were editing we did feel that we might have needed more footage and we felt that we had to repeat a lot of the footage, throughout the production. So we could have taken more advantage of other locations available to us, or to use the ones we had more.

  3. On our magazine advert we wanted to meet all of the real media conventions this was to help us market our product to our target audience. We wanted to make the colour schemes cohesive for the magazine advert and the digi-pack so that the audience would be able to recognise the digi-pack.

The photograph of the Izzy is very clear this may have helped us sell our products in real life as the audience can recognise the artist rather than her name and from this they would know that Izzy have a new product out. Ruby and I as well as the audience thought that it was very clear to see the name of the digi-pack as well as the artist itself which helped the audience once again recognise the product.

On our magazine advert we added where our product would be available from as you can see it is not a usual convention that real media products stick to however we do know that from doing our research that some products do contain this, and as a real media product we thought that this would be vital as Izzy would be a new artist, and this would help persuade them to buy it and inform them of where it can be brought from.

4. We did everything that the conventions asked for with our digi-pack. The colour scheme was cohesive with the magazine advert and also helped connote the genre of the digi-pack. Obviously we had the name of the artist and the digi-pack title on the front of the digi-pack so that people knew what and who they were buying. We had the barcode, track list and also the record label on the back of the digi-pack which followed the conventions however when we interviewed our target audience of their opinions on our product compared to a real media product they said that the record label was not recognisable and that we should of made it more visible like a real media product would. 

6. We did a lot of research into pop music at the beginning of our coursework as we wanted to know what was classed as pop music and where it came from.We found out that pop music has developed from the mid 1950’s, this genre of music came about as a softer alternative to ‘Rock n Roll’.The market for this genre of music is often youths of which is through commercial recordings and usually being short and simple love songs.Pop music often defines the mood of young people, and the lyrics often relate to their feelings and thought of their world, this is why we choose Warwick avenue for Izzy to sing as our audience would be able to relate to it.

7. Laura Mulvey made political use of Freud and Lacan and from there concepts she argues that the cinematic apparatus of classic Hollywood cinema inevitably put the audience in a male perspective and having the female as an object of desire on screen.

Mulveys suggested a very traditional view that female are to be looked at and are for the use of the male entertainment.

 8.  Andrew Good win – his theory of a conflict being resolved from a literary or narrative idea, and is relevant to both the images seen and sounds heard in promotional video clips.

We know that the song is coming to its conclusion because it

Develops convention:

Visually, when the female lead walks away from the male, for example when Izzy walks down the drive

Musically, with the final cadence.

Challenges convention

Lyrically, with the repeat of the words that are borrowed from the title. However this song challenges this as the song is called Warwick avenue, and in the last few lines the lyrics are ‘baby you’ve hurt me’

 We used visuals that amplified the lyrics because we didn’t want to contradict the lyric as we thought this would just make things hard for ourselves and also it may have been harder to get the image across to the audience. For example when with a train and the lyrics – ‘ but I didn’t want to train to come’ PLAY CLIP!

We used stereotypical representations so that our audience will find it easier to relate to the music video. For example the stereotypical view of male versus female based on the myth that a female is automatically unhappy without the male. For example you remember from the slide about pop music, it represents youth’s feelings and we definitely portrayed this. However you could say that we could have shown more emotions for example we could have shown the main character, Izzy crying more.

We used lots of close ups in the music video not only to meet the companies demand but to advertise the artist. So in a real media situation we could help promote her.They do this to keep the attention of the viewers and if the music video is exciting they will watch it and with the digital technology out today they may even buy it.

We feel that we didn’t really have much creativity therefore in a real situation our product might not be as successful as others in the market. We feel that our video would not have helped us sell the products that we also produced like our digi-pack, we also felt that our video wouldn’t be successful if it was sold on itunes. This is because we are not able to compete with larger record labels, however this could be possible if we were able to getting backing from a successful existing one such as Wax on.

 9. theodor Adorno – we develop his convention of  ‘Popular media and music products being characterised by standardisation and ‘individualisation’ as we feel that our interpretation related directly to the lyrics and the representation being portrayed are the same, however we do not feel that is it the same as other pop music such as that of Girls Aloud or the Saturdays as they are more upbeat.Andrew Goodwin argues the importance of repetition as the repeat of a certain rhythm, riff, lyric or even a shot serves to make the song memorable, therefore possibly increasing single and album sales, when referring to the Structure of Music Video in relation to the theories of Theodore Adorno.

11. As we  didn’t know the ins and outs of final cut pro we decided to watch some tutorials. We found these really useful as we learnt to use editing techniques that are used in a real media product. We first got the idea of using split screens when we saw an advert for next clothing on the TV and we really liked the effect therefore we went and found out how to do it.

We found the tutorials on YouTube. YouTube has lots of tutorials on the website which helped us with other editing techniques as well.  We wanted to learn from tutorials because it would help make our music video look professional and help it to comply with the codes and conventions of a music video.

12. We felt that our three productions were successful however we do feel that our ancillary tasks are a more effective combination than any of the others. We feel that our music video doesn’t show that it is part of the ancillary tasks. We as well as our interviewees agree that the digi-pack and the magazine advert are closely linked. This may be because the magazine is for the digi-pack and we decided to keep the colours the same so the audience could recognise the product on the shelf from the magazine advert.

The one fault that our interviewees stated was that the magazine advert and digi-pack did not have any recognition with the music video as they were not filmed in the same places and there is no recognition of the locations. The interviewees say that they would not be able tell that the video was related to the ancillary tasks other than the character.

We really like the colours in our ancillary tasks and when we were in the stages of production we decided that both of our ancillary tasks should be in cohesive as we felt that the red standing out connotes that the album is a love CD and the black and white connote the problems she is going through, this is what our audience can relate to. From our research it shows that people who listen to pop music listen to it because it defines the mood of young people and our target audience is young people who are likely to go through these exact same feelings.

 Over all we have come to a decision that we could have combined our ancillary tasks with our main production more. We could have done this through using the same locations or making them more recognisable, or by having a scene where Izzy is wearing the red dress, as this would make it more cohesive. However we feel that both of the ancillary tasks work very well together because although the images are not the same, they are cohesive and in similar locations.

• 13. Face book – we used new media technologies such as face book to help us get our audience research, this was because we felts that by using this network we would be able to easily identify our target audience and get there response on our ideas, and this was when deciding on which song to choose. This is adopted by the theory of David Gauntlet, which is researching by social networks creating a community of ideas, and increases the engagement of the world.  This links with the connection and uses of YouTube.
• YouTube – YouTube was a very important part of our secondary research as we used to find the codes and conventions when analyse existing music videos, such as Taylor Swift and Beyonce. YouTube was also the most helpful in editing as it taught us new techniques that were very easy to follow. As we have now uploaded our music video on to YouTube this will be open to our target audience to comment on, oh which is very useful in our stages of evaluation. After it being on YouTube for 3 days we have had 3 comments on this of which were all positive comments. We decided to post it on you tube as the proliferation of it is worldwide. As a real media product YouTube is often used as below the line advertising, this is more used by independent film companies such as Warp and Warp X.
• IPhone – we used the resources of an iPhone when we were filming as Izzy forgot the lyrics to the song; this was very useful as we were easily able to research this when on location. The iPhone was a useful technological convergence as we also used it to play the music when on locations this was so that Izzy could sing along to music to keep to the timing of which made it easier for us when editing.
• Internet – we used the internet to research our codes and conventions for our music video. The Internet has been a big use for us as we have been able to access a wide amount of information and videos, this made our time more efficient and effective.
• Final Cut Pro – we used final cut pro to edit our music video. At first this was difficult as we were unsure how to use, but we then began to pick up the skills needed we also used tutorials on YouTube to help us. This was used to bring all of our footage together and to cut out the parts that we did not need. We had to change the speeds levels, the size and the brightness of some shots. To improve out music video we also had to add a few editing techniques these included: moving the shot out of the frame, representations of flashbacks, video transitions. Andrew good win: “with a flashbulb accenting stresses in rhythm” (p.63).  Showing that all the cuts should relate to the image and can help to emphases the lyrics and meaning, – for example when  Izzy was in the  field as she looks behind her and we can see Charlie, we used Goodwin theory here by reducing the speed of Izzy turning to emphasis that she can not get him of her mind. Play video
• Mixing desk – this was used to capture the audio in the planning stages; this helped to make our music video sounds more professional.
• Mac mini – this was used in the recording studio to record Izzy singing and Mr Waterhouse playing the piano. This was then converted on the iMac.
• Garage band – this was the software used to record our music.
• Cannon XM2 – this was the camera we used to capture our footage on. We decide to use this camera instead of the other school camera as this one if of better quality therefore making the picture better and giving the music video a more professional finish.

14. We decided to interview three people on their thoughts and iconography of our ancillary products. We decided that this was very useful as we needed to see if we had correctly targeted our target audience, so we thought that the best way to do this was to show 2 girls from out target audience out products to test whether or not our theory’s work, as this would reflect our research skills.

We also interviewed one boy; this was to test our theory on our secondary audience.to see if he could recognise that the primary target audience was female. However we could have been more successful in this buy interviewing more people so that we would have a more reliable feedback.

Here is our interviewing video.

15. We have learnt a lot from our audience feedback and we have both taken their opinions into consideration. We have agreed that if we were to correct our products we would definitely get more audience feedback and use their information. 

Audience feedback is very vital as it shows us if we have actually met the needs of our audience and if not why haven’t we?

Ben – URGENT!

Just watched your video  – you definitely need something to make this narrative clearer because at the moment you would be severely marked down for this.

Two options:

Take a still photo of me Ollie and Oscar together which you can have Paul holding and then looking up to give the idea we are a family; this could then go after the phone call.

Chris’s voice over the shooting of Oli (e.g. kill the boy) and the shooting of me (kill the wife) .

Option 2 is easier but isn’t going to raise your marks loads because you are a lot below the time, so I would organise yourself and go for option 1.

You have had a long time to sort this out and we are way past deadline now, but I am giving you a chance to do this because otherwise your grade will be low. You have until the end of the week.

Miss G

Final evaluation

Throughout my coursework, I tried to meet the conventions of the local newspapers, the poster and website. To find out the conventions of them, I used the search engine on the internet such as Google and Yahoo websites. I managed to get most of the information I wanted for research such as the conventions of different genres of newspapers and their website, and also the terminology and the theories about the newspapers. There are always loads of useful websites I could go on and I could even find pictures of newspapers in 100 years ago. As it was too convenient for searching information, so I think I became t dependent to this technology. In my planning section, I couldn’t able to find any newspaper posters on the internet so I immediately presumed that newspaper companies no longer make posters for their newspaper.

Anyway I have investigated the conventions of the newspaper by looking at the other newspapers to find out the general convention of the newspapers, such as the masthead is usually place at the top of the page.

• I used the convention of the masthead at the top of the page, and also there are usually kickers, support stories and advertisements which I also pick up to use on my newspape.

 Then I looked more closely on the specific conventions of the local newspapers such as the news values of the articles. This is a theory which determines the worth of a news story and how much prominence it is given by newspapers. I found that the local newspaper usually report the negative stories as it also has a lot of news values of negativity, impact and frequency as the Media researcher Johan Galtung and Marie Holmboe said that bad news is more exciting than good news, and are more likely to score on other news values, whereas the national newspaper intend to report the news that that have news values of reference of elite person and nation, which usually involved with famous people and other countries.

• The left one is a national newspaper The Guardian. It  focus on  reporting international news and powerful person e.g Obama the president of USA. The right one is obviously local newspaper which reports a 14 years old person. You can distinguish the genre by looking at the news they report.

 So I concentrated on writing up negative local stories to meet the conventions. On my first page, I wrote an article about a school girl killed by her teenage boyfriend and reported that the murderer was on the run in the local area, to affect more local people in the article, so it has the news value of threshold as well. It can give information and social interaction to the local people, it could be a big opportunity for the community to discuss about. However, I think I have overdone as the newspaper reports mainly negative stories though I tried to add article like ‘Summer fair’ and ‘furniture sale’, this still gives an impression of my newspaper telling sad news to the audience, which I don’t think my audience would get entertainment from my paper.

• the newspaper above clearly show what the editors decided to put on the front page depends on the news values, they are usually negative stories in the local newspapers. The other news values such as personalisation and meaningfulness are usually placed at the second page.

  I have also tried to meet the newspaper convention by using the similar font. In the textual analysis, I have discovered that the national newspapers are more likely use modern fonts, particularly the masthead, which connotes that the national newspapers are developing with new technology, whereas the local newspapers keens on using old English font style, Leicester Mercury and Loughborough Echo for instance. I think this connotes the long local history of the newspapers and maintains a link with local community.

As for my newspaper website, I also went to the other newspapers’ websites to see the common conventions of the website. I found that most local newspaper websites always have information about local events, motor, property, jobs and date whereas there were fewer national newspaper websites contain this kind of information; I think this is one of the biggest differences between the genres. The audience can get social interaction from the websites as it enables them to connect with local community.

• The local newspaper Leicester also gives the audience social interaction and personal identitiy by giving out sports awards to the local people.

I also found out that all websites main purpose is to report news and advertise, which I also followed. However, the final website wasn’t conventional as I didn’t add the photo gallery of local events and information such as jobs and property due to lack of times and skills on Dreamweaver. So the layout wasn’t look as professional as other local newspaper websites. I also forgot to add the ‘comment’ option for each article so there isn’t very much social interaction for my target audience. Yet I managed to make navigation bar with lots of selection of news and put loads of advertisements on the website which other newspapers website had. To make my newspaper cohesive with the website, I put the website link on the top of first page so that the readers can easily spot out. For the institutional conventions, I would link my website to the local websites such as jobs agency and ‘This is Leicester’ website so that more people can find out more about the newspaper website.

• I failed to meet one of the conventions of newspaper website. The website contains mostly news and advertisements.I didn’t give any social interaction such as comments and local events on my website. I was mainly lack of skills on Dreamweaver.

As I couldn’t find any existing newspaper posters in my planning, so I was not able to know any conventions of it. So the process making this wasn’t cohesive, I started making this poster after I have finished my newspaper and the website. I tried to express that my newspaper reports correct information rather than just simply advertising itself. Because I believe that newspaper should send out information without any opinions from any political view. So the idea of the poster was that my newspaper protects the audience from prejudice, rumours…etc and claims that my newspaper only reports the truth. Overall I tried to make the poster cohesive, by putting the newspaper name at the bottom and link the slogan ‘The truth will be revealed’ with the website. Once my newspaper publishes, I will put my poster at Highcross in Leicester to advertise my newspaper. I could also put my poster in the supermarket and newspaper agents as they are the places where people usually buy newspaper.

• Highcross is the biggest shopping centre in Leicester so I think placing my poster in the shops could certainly get a lot of people attention.

  For my local newspaper, I used the iconography of a bird as my newspaper is called Leicester Phoenix which made a little bit different from the other local newspapers since most of them used the word ‘Echo’ ‘Mail’ ‘Time’ for the name. It can gives a dominant reading of legend which implies my newspaper is legendary, it also has negotiated reading of ‘homing pigeon’ which birds were used to send out information in the past, so the audience can get the information no matter where they are. However I forgot to put to put the icon on my poster and website to make them work together.

Then I selected five people from my target audience which is 35 years old above people and asked them what they liked and what they didn’t like about my products. One of the people I asked is a lady in mid – fifties. She said the layout and and the articles looked as real as the existing local newspapers, she liked the use of colours red and green of the top banner as they contrast which drew her attention immediately. The thing she didn’t like the advertisement of job centre on the second page. She said the advertisement looked colourful though the writing was too small. She liked the poster as well but she had a negotiated reading of that my newspaper was water proofed and alsoshe couldn’t see what that the model was holding. So I presumed that I have made the newspaper too bright in the poster. And about the website, she said she didn’t really go to newspapers’ website to read new as she explained that ‘It is much convenient to read newspaper rather than internet.’ She subscribed newspapers so she could get the newspaper every morning.

A forty four years old man said that 59p is too expensive for a local newspaper. He said that the local newspaper only cost 36p so he thought that my newspaper should lower the cost so that to attract my target audience to read mine. So I have learnt that my newspaper shouldn’t have cost too much as my target audience might not buy my newspaper. He liked the idea of the newspaper as he hated media that brought in false information to audience. However he thought that the message of the poster wasn’t strong enough, as there was only rain and black clouds which couldn’t emphasis the message. He suggested that I could add wind or thunder to make the effect stronger. He also gave some comments about my website. He said the website layout looks good but he thought that my website should report different news from my newspaper, as they report the same news so there was no purpose going on the website to read the same articles.

• I used one of the conventions in Leicester Mercury to make my top banner. However I enlarged the image because I thought the text on the right hand side is too small to be seen so I developed it to make both sides look equal.

  According to my audience feedback, I think I only did well on my two page newspaper, as I have met my target audience needs such as reporting the news like the other newspaper do and also provide information about jobs and vouchers of supermarket. It was because I spent most of the effort and time on my newspaper so my poster and website are rushed and don’t really work well on my target audience. For example, I should have looked at the issue of older people read news on the newspaper and research how to encourage them to read news online. I could have said on my poster that the website regularly updates news in a day to meet my audience needs that they want to know latest news from the internet.

I used the new media technologies throughout the planning and construction stages. This blog I am using is a technology that can record all the things I have done in the coursework, I can also put pictures and video on the blog and update the errors and improve the work I did

For my newspaper I created a bird which is special and I also think the image is very suitable for a newspaper as it represents freedom which effectively combined with my poster. I am trying to say that my newspaper reports the truth and doesn’t tolerate any false information in the poster, which means my newspaper is free to speak, so I think the bird could link my poster and the newspaper together. To make the bird, I used pen tool in Photoshop and followed the tutorial on the internet to draw it.

To make the two pages of the newspaper, I have put a lot of effort on Adobe Indesign which I had never used in my life before.  Fortunately it wasn’t too hard to use as I just needed to draw some boxes and lines on the newspapers, the only problem I had was cutting off the background of the photo. I thought I could do it in Photoshop, yet when I paste it to the page; it always saves the file with a white background. then I followed the tutorial to cut off the background.

When I was editing my poster, the first effect I needed to make was rain, I followed a video on youtube to make the rain effect.

The I wanted to make dark clouds to make the weather looked worse.

In fact, I used Photoshop more than Indesign, it is because I need to make a lot of advertisements for my newspaper and website. I also learnt a lot of tutorials on YouTube. I thought I could learn to use Flash to create animation however I discovered that Photoshop could also make animations.

The I looked at more tutorials for advanced skills on Photoshop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reBUwhOCHoI

I have also learnt a lot to make the website as I have never create a website before. I needed to learn about how to create the website structure, create navigation bar and using CSS to make the website looks better.

First I looked at the basic tutorial

Then I looked at CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) tutorial

I also watched tons of other youtube tutorials to help me create the website. This technology helped me a lot. Without youtube, I couldn’t have made the website.

Final Evaluation

Here is the final evaluation. I decided to make it a blog post as it was easier for me to get the information across.

http://www.glebbo.com/ciaran

1. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For my audience feedback I handed out a questionnaire to three people from my target audience and then once they had filled it in, I asked some of them for more information on what they had said. I felt in this way I could get more information to learn from and to use in the future.

To remind you of the audience I was aiming my product at, I was trying to attract boys and girls aged between 16 and 21 who tend to enjoy listening to music and go out a lot. One key feature I would say most people I aimed my product should have is read NME (New Musical Express) to keep up to date with music. These people are more of the indie community.

The first two people I will be looking at are the people that I actually modelled my Target audience profiles on as I these were the two people I thought fitted the best into the category I was working on.

The first person is James Mason (Mr X). The first three questions I asked were for James to give positive and negative feedback on all three of my products.

In response to the music video he said “It’s very simple but works very nicely” and from a negative point he said, “The story wasn’t easy for me to understand even though you kept that part separate with the black and white” From this I have learnt that I am doing the simple things well, and from the negative side I feel I can spin it on its head by referring back to the codes and conventions I found for music videos. I found that in editing, “the most common form is fast-cut montage, rendering many of the images impossible to grasp on first viewing, so making sure the audience have to watch it more than once”. From this I can say I have developed on this theory and made the story quite difficult to get on the first viewing. The audience has to watch the video a few times to get the full story behind it.

Next I looked at what he had to say for the advert. The positive comment read “this is by far your best product, very stylish” and the negative comment read “the only issue I have with this is I can’t read some of the details at the bottom without looking very closely”. I completely agree with James on this and on reflection of the whole thing, I think perhaps trying to do a main print product instead may have benefitted me. I also found it very hard to make the text at the bottom clear whilst keeping the whole image in black and white to fit in with my concept. In future projects I hope I will be able to keep things clear on print productions as I will probably not be using a black and white!

Finally the comments for the website: in the positive section James wrote “The black and white fits in with the rest of the products” and in the negative wrote “it’s probably the worst of the three products. It just isn’t a good website”. Once again I totally agree with James on this. The website was in fact the hardest part for me and definitely my weakest aspect. There wasn’t a lot there I could learn from.

I then had two questions below these comment boxes. The questions were:

• Do the products seem to follow conventions of similar products? Or do they challenge them?
• Do you think that the three products are cohesive? (All fit together nicely towards a same concept)

James simply put “follow” and “yes” in these two boxes so there is not much I can draw from this.

Most of the other people wrote the same things as James in their questionnaires however there are certain points from each on that I can take and learn from.

 

Poppy (aka Miss Y) wrote about the website saying “It’s all too boxy! And it doesn’t fit on the screen.” From this I can say next time I need to be aiming to make the site far more stylish. I need to make everything fit so the audience can see everything they need to and not have to scroll sideways everywhere. In the “Are the products cohesive?” box she wrote “They are all linked by the black and white which not only looks good but also works together clearly.” This is one of the very strong points of my production. All the products fit together well and people can clearly identify how.

 

Ciaran Sheehy (The one on the right) was also a member of my target audience at age 17. He also like to play many sports and enjoys listening to the same sort of music as the people in my target audience. The main thing to pick up on from what he said was that he particularly liked the image in the print production. “The idea of a guy in ghetto clothes playing a piano gives the image of the calmed down music in the video”. This was exactly the idea I was going for in the concept so I have learnt that the image on an advert is vitally important to a concept as it should be aiming to bring it all together. As they say, a picture paints a thousand words. My image should be painting the whole concept for all the products.

2… In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For this I need to refer right back to when I was looking at codes and conventions and refer to how they show I used and developed conventions.

We’ll start with the music video. The general idea from this was that I was aiming to mostly meet the conventions but try and develop them a little bit. From general theory I can say the lyrics were very important in meeting conventions. I had to use the lyrics to develop a mood. The song gave a very mellow and calm mood and this is reflected in the shots. Shots of trees and skies helped this.

I also met the conventions of the genre by using the woods a lot in the mise-en-scene.

 I also feel I met the conventions of Intertextuality. I used specific shots throughout which referred back to the lyrics of the song. An example of this is when the lyrics say “Every park bench screams your name” I use a park bench for several shots of the performance of the band in the video but then the last time the line is used the same shot is used but with Charlie on the bench instead.

Another perfect example of this is the line “I kept your tie”. Towards the end the last shot of the story line is of the tie.

I also follow the conventions of a few of the music video theorists. Andrew Goodwin said “Genres often have their own style/iconography” I managed to follow this by including an acoustic guitar throughout the video. An icon of the genre the song belongs to.

John Stewart’s theory says “The video allows more access to the performer than a stage performance can. The mise-en-scene, in particular, can be used to emphasise an aspirational lifestyle” I may not have used the mise-en-scene to show an aspirational lifestyle but it is used fantastically throughout the video to create a better environment and a better performance than most stages can make.

Steve Archer’s theory states that “There needs to be a strong and coherent relationship between narrative and performance in music promos. It needs to market both the song and the band”. I have met this convention really well by separating the two in the video with the use of desaturation. The shots in black and white clearly show the narrative and therefore market the song whereas the shots of the band are showing the performance of the band and therefore market them as well.

I also applied several narrative theories to my music video which are worth mentioning. Propp’s theory on meta-narrative’s is challenged by my video because its meant to relate to an everyday story that we relate to but the average boy meets girl story is in fact changed in my video as in the end they don’t fall in love and run away happily ever after. Propp’s Character Types was one that I felt applied well to the video. The Hero role was clearly depicted by Charlie and the Princess by Harriet. You can then add that the donor in the narrative is in fact the band giving the hero the song to remember the experience. This then applies with Todorov’s Equilibrium Theory. It is developed in a sense because the whole narrative has the New Equilibrium right from the start where Charlie knows it hasn’t worked and he has transformed and can only look back on the events. The main bulk of the narrative is then looking back at how it came to this new equilibrium.

Next we shall move onto the conventions of the print production. I was aiming to meet the conventions by making the advert like other but also challenge the conventions by keeping the product in concept and making it black and white.

Adverts use various different strategies in order to gain the audiences attention. Here are a few of the strategies I was able to incorporate to help my product.

I found in the research that the image on the advert is very important to attracting an audience. I used what would be the album artwork as using this would make the audience aware of what the album looked like so that when they saw it in shops, they would recognise it and perhaps want to buy it.

Another convention I found was that you have to have style in your advert. I was given the example of this advert. I feel the shot I used of the long exposure and the combination of black and white met and developed this convention. As you can see from the example image, there isn’t a lot of colour in the advert but it is all very stylish.

One final convention that I needed to pick up on was that the brand name needed to be placed over and over on the advert. I didn’t put it everywhere but I it is clear who it is advertising as the band’s name is right at the top of the poster and it is quite distinguishable.

 

Finally we move onto the website. I was simply trying to meet the conventions of websites as it was not my strongest point and I doubt I would have been able to do anything special to challenge them.

I managed to get the Title into the website with the bands name being at the top of the page. I the made sure there was a row containing the contents of other web pages. Obviously there was nothing at the end of these links as I was only making the homepage. I also made use of putting plenty of pictures into the site which kept the website into a blog style, which I what I found most other bands website to be like.

3… How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

 

If I refer back to the audience feedback, I found that all of the people I asked recognised that the black and white in all three products was used to connect them all together. This is clearly showing an effective combination and I strongly believe that this combination would work effectively in a real world situation.

Another main aspect that links the two products is the sort of mellow feel to all three products. There isn’t anything jumping out at you in any of the three and none of them go crazy with colours therefore they all link together in the mood they give the audience.

 

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

Technology was a huge part of the whole process making the three products. I will start at the beginning of course with the research and planning.

The internet was the biggest technology used in the research as the vast majority of information these days can be found there. YouTube was a huge help in looking at other similar videos and analysing them. They also helped in creating ideas for me. It then also came in handy with the other products in the planning stages where I was able to use YouTube to look at tutorials for better techniques when actually making the products.

I then made very good use of e-mail by sending out questionnaires to lots of people through that. This enabled me to reach out to more people in my target audience and as so many people these days use email, I received plenty of replies back. I then used Microsoft Excel to record all my results. I could then put them into graphs so that it was easier for anyone as well as me to see what things my audience wanted from my products.

The deciding of the song used for the video was a huge factor for me, so I recorded several using the schools very own recording studio. It is only a small soundproof booth that contains two microphones. These are wired up to a small mixing deck which then goes through to a small iMac. The sound is recorded straight into GarageBand where I could then mix it down to iTunes. I could then use iTunes to burn all the songs to CD. The main difficulties in the recording studio were that it was all being recorded live so it had to be good on the take that was recorded. This meant making sure the sound levels were good and the vocals could be heard clearly.  I feel that in the end, the quality of the recordings was fantastic and worked very well. To listen to some of the other songs that were recorded, feel free to go to http://www.youtube.com/user/ciarangrant1.

Moving on to the actual production process where the majority of technology was used. The film was actually shot on a Canon XM2. The footage was then digitalized on Final Cut Pro which took quite some time as I think there was over an hours worth of actual footage!

Once it was on the computer, I was able to let use and start the editing process. Final Cut Pro gave me a huge range of different editing techniques to choose from. I was able to move the clips around accurately so that the video matched the audio on the film. I was also able to use desaturation on all the clips that were for the narrative which gave the video the separation between band and narrative and also gave it the link in concept with the other products. When the production was actually finished I was able to export it using a QuickTime converter. Once I had it in a .mov file I then changed it again to make it into an mp4 file as this made it much easier and quicker to upload the product to YouTube.

With the Print production I mainly used Photoshop apart from when I wanted to print it, which is when I used Adobe Reader to have it in PDF format. The various tools on Photoshop meant I could create the image I wanted. The image was taken on a Nikon camera which I set to a long exposure which gave the image of a blur over the piano keys. I made this by making the model sit completely still whilst only moving his hands over the keys. The effect looks fantastic even though it took a few tries to get it right.

I then edited the image in Photoshop by simply putting it into black and white and then fiddling with the luminosity curves a little bit. The background was made by drawing white lines from corner to corner of the page. After drawing about 20, I filtered the page with a Gaussian Blur and a twirl effect. Then I added the text on in Pristina Font. The only different font is on the actual album title where I used some Symbol font to make it seem more mathematical.

The album artwork was added and then feathered to blend in with the background rather than just be a block on the page.

With the website there was a lot to learn for me so I had to use YouTube quite a bit and ask around friends who were more experienced. I used Dreamweaver to construct the website. It was quite simple to use once I got the hang of it however advanced techniques were quite difficult to grasp.