My Evaluation (Hannah)

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product has a variety of different forms and conventions, which we have gathered inspiration for from research. From research we gathered an idea of the general conventions of love song music videos; lots of close ups of the artist or couple presented, most have a storyline or show clear emotion in terms of love, the location is normally an everyday place such as a home or street, the tempo of the editing connects with the mood of the song for example a sad love songs would be slow passed and a happy videos more upbeat. The use of different shots and lighting is greatly determined by the mood of the song and the combination of, shots, editing and lighting emphasises the emotion. The song that we chose was Way Back into love by Haley Bennett which has a clear pop song and romantic genre. The song is a duet by Hugh Grant and the lyrics talk about finding love. It was easy to come up with ideas to suit the song because of the genre and lyrics but what we didn’t want to do was be predictable and boring in our narrative. Bad Day by Daniel Powter really highlighted what we wanted for our music video and we saw from this video that we could portray our idea without it looking predictable. That video along side No air by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown helped us to mould our narrative as well as giving us ideas for editing such as split screens and slow motion shots. These songs gave us a view of an upbeat happy love song and a more emotional song as well as linking in some ways with song that we had chosen. Because the song, Way back into Love, didn’t have an original music video apart from a c lip from the movie that it is in, we found first ideas quite a challenge as there wasn’t anything to work from. However this gave us the chance to start from scratch and not be influenced by an original. In our music video we have the typical couple that meet just like in a romantic movie. This narrative for the music video suits the lyrics and theme of the song as it is rather cheesy and soppy. Making the couple meet in the music video gave us the chance to use different locations and situations instead of just shots of them together. We have used lots of shots of the artist with a range of lip synching in different locations to make the music video look professional. This is used in other music videos as it allows the artist to sell them self and make a connection with the audience. Our music video is a style which appeals to younger viewers as well as older viewers as it is subtle in impact (there is no inappropriate footage) and the narrative is familiar. We tried to mix the stereotypical romantic scene with realistic situations and locations. We really liked the piano piece at the beginning of the song and thought it would make a good opening to have someone playing the tune. This emphasised the music and gave the music video an interesting opening. The fade we used to layer the image of Sheridan waking up gave the opening a nice flow that suits the rhythm and mood of the song as well as making it not look messy. Overall our music video has most of the conventions of a love song music video with a modern style that introduces a new artist. The conventions and narrative that we used complimented the song and brought out the lyrics in a simple but effective way.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Our digi-pack is largely influenced by our music video, song and research of other products. It sells the artist as well as the song and expressed the theme/style of music through colour and pattern. Our main aim was to make a digi-pack advertising the music video and song, which looks attractive and modern. We didn’t want to over complicate the design but we wanted to make it recognisable and likable. By making the images of the artist limited and simplified we are keeping the audience wanting to find out more about her. Our poster gives a fresh new image to the artist portraying her as a new upcoming star; the silhouette was a great way of doing this. The patterned background also gives an artistic feel giving the impression that she is very talented and unique. Our CD/DVD cover shares this artistic and abstract style in a way that strongly links to the song/music video Way Back into Love with the use of typical images associated with love; rose, hearts etc. We wanted to attracted people to the artist by using an image of her face, however for the image to work well with the rest of the cover and also to keep mystery a lot of editing had to be done. A clear link between our ancillary task and music video was really important to stop it looking random and inappropriate. The link enables the consumer to know what they are buying without confusion and to judge everything as a pack. By including the correct information it makes our digi-pack look more thorough and friendly as well as informing the consumer. Putting information onto the digi-pack also gave us an opportunity to compliment the video and encourage people to what it.

What have you learnt from your audience feed back?
All feedback received was taking into consideration and recorded on our blog for easy access. The feed back we received after our rough cut was really helpful as it enabled us to really improve our music video. We tried to focus on the feed back when we went out to do more filming and went over parts that people thought should have been done differently or needed some improvement. One thing that people suggested was that the couple in the music video needed to look more comfortable with each other and there needed more narrative in their meeting. So when we gathered more footage we made sure Sheridan and Callum acted more naturally and if anything more loveable! We also brought back unused footage and edited it into the music video to give more of a storyline. Another suggestion was that we needed more footage of the artist singing, so we shot lots of different angles of the whole song with Sheridan and Callum singing both together and separately. We also re filmed the piano part of our music video and spent a lot of time editing it to look as effective as possible. The change in feedback from out rough cut to our final piece was a big improvement and there wasn’t really anything to change. Feedback was really important as it enabled us to hear what people thought of our music video and we got a different perspective from outside the group. If we didn’t receive feedback for our rough cut our final piece may not have been as good! We also had feedback on our ancillary task which was a really positive response; however a suggestion was for it to be bigger. In terms of our CD/DVD cover, they liked the simplicity of our digi-pack and thought that the colours worked well; ‘We love it’. They said that there is a nice motif with use of hearts and roses connecting with the word ‘love’. They liked the silhouette and thought the font was a good chose; although a little hard to read. Because we didn’t get this feed back until after we had completed our ancillary task we were unable to make changes, but we can learn from this for future projects. Overall our feed back really helped us to make the best our project.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages?
Without the use of new media technologies making our music video would not have been possible and we learnt how important different equipment is for shooting our music video. We would not have been able to carryout useful research with out access to the internet and sites such as YouTube. This suit enabled is to watch a number of videos easily and quickly and gather inspiration as well as giving us the chance to show the world our video! Another useful site was Blogger which gave us a personal space to express ideas and research, make important plans and notes as well as show others our work and view theirs. Having a blog solved all communication issues for example if a member of our group was ill they could find out what we are doing from home. The blog also solved any planning issues as everything could easily be recorded for future reference. Not only was blogger useful throughout our project but it is more interesting than writing everything down and we could show off our work! For filming itunes enabled us to put our song onto the speakers and so film our lip synching footage. Having the speakers meant that Sheridan and Callum could hear the song easily and we could take it to all our different locations. Having the song playing in speakers was also better for editing as we could hear the track in the footage and line it up to the song without a problem and more effectively. A tripod was really useful for shooting of our video because without it we would not have been able to do out split screens. After doing some test footage without the tripod we realised that the two shots did not line up and were shaky, so from then on we made sure our tripod was set up correctly for filming each piece of footage for the split screens. All editing for our music was carried out on Final Cut which is an easy to use programme that has many different settings to apply and tools to adjust footage. Final cut was a very important piece of technology because we could correct mistakes, apply different effects, and cut and crop footage to give an effective and professional finish. Are ancillary tasks were carried out on Photoshop where we had the freedom to create something we liked. With Photoshop the variety of tools enables you to adjust the smallest detail on your work to get exactly what you want. Also the use of layers gives you the chance to build on top of initial ideas and designs. Overall without new media technologies we would not have been able to research, film, edit or advertise our project effectively if at all.