Evaluation

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

In media for our A2 portfolio we were asked to produce one main product chosen independently from a list of options including; produce a music video and two subsidiary promotion packages or create a film trailer also with two additional ancillary texts. I chose to produce a music video as I wanted to challenge my knowledge within the promotional video field of media and the conventional forms advertisements and promotion. Conforming with the music genre was key in the production of this promotion video. I wanted to produce a video with a lot of meaning and that was relevant to the lyrics. Before starting my video i looked into other songs of different genres including 'Third Eye Blind' and 'Alicia keys' and in the difference between the two videos, there is a prominent contrast between them. This told me that the difference in genre means that the video is going to be very different. I looked into some more of Paolo nutinis work, including the song 'Candy'. I think that this music video had the biggest connection between one of his existing music videos and mine. This included slow motion shots and short clips. There was not an existing music video for 'these streets' song which i think worked to my advantage because whatever features i decide to include is going to be all my ideas and creative. There are ways in which my product fits conventions, one way in which it fits conventions is the way my music video cuts the the beat or the rhythm of my song. Generally most music videos cut to the beat of the music so therefore i wanted to include this convention to make it look professional. I edited the colours of my music video. To do this i had to go through every clip and edit the colours birghtness and contrast. Generally in most slow songs, the music video incorporates slow motion clips, so i decided to include this effect in my music video. At first i wanted to start the music video off at a slightly normal pace, not including slow motion effects and throughout the song i wanted to include more slow motion effects, this will signify the music getting more meaningful as the song goes on.

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

In the music industry it has become habitual that when a new album is released there are promotion packages also produced so make the album successful. This is a very important stage in the music industry as without the promotion it is unlikely to sell as well. Before making my two ancillary texts i had to research and plan what i was going to do in relation to conformity and genre. Looking through some existing promotion packages its clear that they need to reflect upon the style of music it is going to be promoting. For example in Paolo Nutinis latest album 'Sunny Side Up' the design of the album cover is colourful, complimented by the use of a cartoon character to represent the artist. This is very opposing to the style of my album cover, the reason being the contrast between the style of the two albums and the significant difference between the pace and meaning of the songs. When making my two subsidiary products IE the promotion poster and album cover, this was using basic skill learnt at As level in making my double page spread. I have a keen interest in photography and when planning what image i would have for these products i recalled upon some pictures i had taken previous to this project. I decided to use my final images because of the relevance to the genre. I manipulated these images with adobe photoshop and Microsoft publisher. This was merely a question of editing the colour and fitting the appropriate texts and fonts onto the page. I found my font for 'wordart'. however i wanted to make the style more personalised so i edited it on format to make it look more individual keeping in theme with the design aspects i had planned. Also i needed to contemplate whether i would have similar looking album cover as my promotion poster.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our audience feedback was a set task with the aim of enabling us to gain outside knowledge within this field of work that we were unaware of. The advantage to the audience feedback was the accessibility to analyse the feedback and know different aspects within the video that could be improved. I asked three of my friends to view my video and give me feedback. Most of the feedback that i received was positive, however, this didn't really give me an insight to where i may have gone wrong. In response to this problem i structured a third and final question which was 'Are there any parts in particular in which you thought could have been improved on?' this question led to answers which would tell me what features of the video could be improved on. Aspects such as brightness and contrast, and including the use of more people. I think that the use of more people would have made a lot of sense as the song itself mentions a lot about people and emotion. There are some points in the music video that the colour and contrast is a bit too strong, for example the point in which the lyrics say 'searching for the change that i lost somehow' the contrast is too strong so therefore Paolo nutinis face is hard to make out. The people who have seen my music video generally liked the slow motion effects that i incorporated in my video, so if i had the chance again i would definately keep this effect. I think that this effect was a simple yet effective move. The slow motion was a symbol indicating the purpose and the depth of meaning to the song. Generally people enjoyed the colours of the video, This was something that was time consuming, however looked nice when it was finished.

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

Throughout the past two years i have progressed and explored different technologies within media that allows me to gain a better understanding of producing certain products. I have become very familiar with the process of hardware and software and gained a lot of knowledge within technology. Certain programmes that i felt restricted my progress was adobe photoshop. This is the industry standard photo manipulation software which allows us to access fonts and contrast aspects within an image and lets us explore a wide variation of sizes, textures and colours. I felt very restrict within this programme as i felt it was very difficult to use, there were some elements within the programme in which i didn't understand. Keeping in mind some of the useful tips that i learnt when processing my AS project, this helped me in the production of my music video as i already had a fairly good understanding on using some of the equipment. One piece of technology that i used was a Canon MD205 portable camera, this was very simple to operate, it is a basic recorder with record and stop on it. The shots were recorded onto a mini Dv (digital). This was an advantage having this camera because it means that what ever is recorded can be uploaded straight onto the LG editing suite using a fire wire connector. Unfortunately there were some negatives in using this camera. If i wanted to use the sound i had shot, i wouldn't be able to because the sound quality on this camera is very poor. Some shots i would have wanted to do at night but i was restricted by this camera as it is a single chip camcorder which meant that it was hard to use at night because the camera could not adjust to the darkness. Similar to our AS project, we were able to process all of our work on the computer on a web page called blogger. This was a huge advantage to me as it is easy to use and can be accessed by any computer worldwide, it is editable and easy to view. How ever, the down side to it being viewable by anyone could be seen as encouraging plagiarism. Some other downsides to using this website was a problem with adding posts. If i wanted to go back to a previous date and add a new post I was not allowed, so this created an issue with ordering my work, which became problematic throughout the later stages of my coursework.

Music Video

Audience Feedback

As part of our project we were also asked to collect audience feedback in aid to help us analysing certain bit which could be improved or other parts which looked good and had a lot of impact on the video.
I asked 3 of my friends to answer the following questions:
What did you think the purpose of my music video was and what was the video reflecting upon?
Do you think the music video reflected on the image of the artist and the music genre?
Are there any parts in particular in which you thought could have been improved on?

Participant one:
Question one: I thought that the music videos aim was to reflect upon life as an adult and includes aspects of the importance of freedom.
Question two: I think that the boy used to be in the music video suited the genre of the music and had a rugged look as that of the artist. As the video was set in fields and small streets with not many people around it really captured the genre and the topic of freedom.
Question three: I think that i would have used a lighter brightess and less contrast so the place looked brighter in some parts of the music video but the rest was really well put together and suited the song.


Participant two;Question one: I thought that the aim of this music video was to show a young man searching for something that he had lost, in this case, his childhood and the relation to stress and play implies that he misses those days.
Question two: I think that the editing really made the video look the piece, i liked the use of slow motion, it really suited the genre and the style of this song.
Question three: I dont think there would be anything i would change if i could do it, i think the use of colour and motion was really effective.


Participant three;
Question one: I think that the aim of the video was to promote the world as it is today and to show the good aspects of the world in a time where it is viewed negatively.
Question two: The song makes me think of freedom and fields, trees and people so i think it suited the lyrics in the song.
Question three; if i was making this video i would have used more people, there are some references in the song which talks about people and faces so i think it would have been good to include some more people.