Evaluation (All Questions) DRAFT

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

Typical conventions of music videos include fast cuts, lip-syncing, bright lighting and dancing. In the music videos that I have researched, there is mainly lip-syncing and fast cuts which I have used in my own music video. I used the convention of lip-syncing throughout the video to relate to the music videos that I have researched. The videos I researched contained a large amount of lip-syncing, which is why I chose to mainly include that in my video. However I have challenged forms and conventions of real media products by not including many dancing scenes. This is mainly due to the fact that I wanted to focus widely on the lyrics of the song as they are quite meaningful. Also, dancing would not fit well with the style of music I have chosen as it is quite slow, but I feel that the shots that I have used in my media product fit well with the style and genre that I have chosen.
Also, I have researched the typical conventions of posters and discovered that the main features would include the artist and album name. A release date is also included in this information. I have used all of this in my own poster. One point that challenged the forms and conventions of real media products is that they are typically portrait, and my poster is landscape, this is due to the poster from ___(can’t remember the name??). The image I used on my poster also relates closely to forms and conventions of typical posters, and the ones I researched which is why I included an image of the artist on the poster.

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

My main product links well to the ancillary texts I created beforehand. The music video relates well due to the relationship between the costume, mise-en-scene, and camera angles. For example, on my digipak there are two images, one on the front and one on the back. Each image is a close up/mid shot. This links to my music video as most of the shots I have used are extreme close ups and close ups. I believe this is very effective because it is able to link between the two thoroughly. On my poster that I created, the image used is very relatable to the images used on the digipak as it is a mid-shot, including similar makeup and hair styles. This is very effective as it is very similar to the videos and ancillary texts that I researched.

3.       What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The audience feedback I received helped me massively as I was able to receive it from a wide variety of people, of different ages and genders. This helped me as it gave me an insight into what people who prefer a different music type would like it to look like and how I could also relate it to the genre that I have chosen. One suggestion from the audience feedback on my ancillary texts was to possibly make it a bit lighter as it looks slightly too dark and doesn’t fit as well with the music video. This made me lighten the image and adjust the brightness settings on all of the images. The text that I used on the poster and digipak is white which stands out well compared to the dark background and image. The feedback I received on this point is the font that I used fit very well with the genre of music and style of song. One point of feedback that I received from my peers was the fact that throughout the music video, the lighting isn’t consistent, this is mainly due to the fact that I was unable to use the same camera I did in the first shoot which affected the lighting situation as it wasn’t as good quality as the camera I used to begin with. Also, I filmed at a different time of day, therefore it is darker in some shots than others. However I have tried to resolve this issue by using video effects on Adobe Premier Pro to help me generate a brighter level of light on the shots that were darker.

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

I filmed my music video on a Canon and a Nikon camera which was very effective as they are both very good quality and focus well which helped me to create the close up shots. Throughout the editing stage of my music video, I used many effects to create the correct lighting and brightness as some of the shots had different lighting to shots that I filmed previously. For example, I used a bright effect and contrast effect to decide on which shots I needed to make brighter and some darker. I did this on Adobe Premier Pro which is a very effective editing software and helped me to create a good music video. For my digipak, I created this on photoshop which I believe is a good software to use as it helped me to create each panel effectively through the use of lighting, brightness, scale and cut out tools. This also helped when I was creating my poster for the video.