Evaluation

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


  My media product uses conventions of a real media product, being a music video of a girl band.

  It includes many different types of shots, including close ups, extreme close ups, long shots and mid shots which help add to the conventions. These keep the pace up of the video and gives the feel of on going action and keeps the viewer entertained.

  Also, there are band performances included in the video which is something that appears in many videos so this is a convention that we made sure we had in ours. In a typical girl band video there is usually the appearance of a guy so Peter played a big part as part of the storyline as well as a convention. Lip syncing and editing was of course others that helped use the conventions of a real media product.

  We developed the conventions of a real media product by using different editing styles like split screen for instance. We used this three times throughout our video and I think this helped the video have more action and not seem static and boring. Another developing technique we used was the shots of the lips singing the words. We liked this idea as it broke up the video from being just the band to the focus on the words being sung. Also, our video was always changing locations and changing storyline so this helped the development.

  However, our media prodcut challenges the conventions of a real media product as we focused on lighting in our video and that can be seen as unusual, adding to the effect of the black and white theme which also challenges the conventions. It looks cinematic considering its genre as we got the idea from 'Vogue' by Madonna. Our video is also low budget which definitely challenges the conventions.

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

  My video and ancillary texts work well together as although the text being slightly different, they both reflect our band in the same way being that we are edgy but also feminine. 
  
  The music video is shot in black and white as well as my ancillary texts as I liked the idea of it looking professional and the focus being on the lighting. I wanted to keep everything in black and white so that the audience's attention would be kept as they can relate both products together. 


  Although I wanted our target audience to engage with the products, the use of different text fonts was so that they did not see the same thing repeatedly but something that caught their eye. 


  The combination of the two work well together because they both combine similarities such as the digipack has a still taken from the video and the attitude given off in the video reflects in my ancillary texts. 


3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?


  From the beginning of the project, the idea we came up with first, was the idea that we produced in the end and was exactly how I imagined it to be. This already was a great achievement for the group, but the feedback we got from the teachers in a 'viewing session' was even better,


"Beautiful, slick and professional video, with fantastic performances and tight editing. Lovely lighting and overall a pleasure to watch"  -Deputy Head and Media teacher.


  This was the image we wanted to portray and very glad that it was enjoyable. We learnt here that our performances were crucial as the message would not have come across how we wanted and the video would not look as professional. On our first filming session I found it hard to perform in front of the camera but after that I managed to boost my confidence. I am glad that I did otherwise it may have jeopardised the final video.


"Absolutely brilliant - could be on MTV! Characters were fantastic and you all gelled together. The clothes and attitude portrayed the image intended" -Head of Sixth Form.


  We were pleased with this comment as it was such a compliment as it seemed that all our hard work had finally payed off and the fact she said it could be on MTV was amazing because our video had clearly come across very professional.


  Even with the link to our video posted on facebook, because available to friends, family and teachers, all the comments were praising and hardly any critical. Although seemed like a positive at first, there was nowhere we seemed to be told to improve and this was seen as slightly negative as we hoped for constructive criticism. 


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


Construction and research-
  Technology such as the internet helped us with our construction and research and inspirations from other music videos came into play and watching the videos on the internet refreshed our memories. Also, taking into account the conventions of our genre would assure that our video included these too. We wanted our costumes to have a certain look which we was able to also use the internet for and found images of Beyonce and Rihanna which inspired us.

Planning-
  The technology that we used for this would be blogger, to blog all research, and also note any changes we made, or things that had gone wrong and we had learn't from. As well as this, our general progress in the project with feedback from teachers and peers on our music video and my ancillary texts. Imovie was used at the beginning of the project to create an anamatic. This helped us a lot when coming to shoot the video.

Evaluation-
  There wasn't much technology used during the evaluation apart from Facebook when Nancy uploaded the video and recieved feedback.

Poster

  Here is the poster to go alongside the music video and digipack. 


  I wanted it to compliment the digipack so the audience can relate our band with both media products. However, I also wanted it to be a bit different so that it would catch the eye of the audience which would intrigue them to listen to our music.


  We all agreed to having a picture of us on the front of the poster as the male audience may be attracted to us and the female audience relate to us as a young, independent band. Also, the audience will also be able to recognise us as 'Bullets and Barbies'. 


  I think the picture reflects our band as we are fighting over a barbie and this shows how we are not completely feminine but feisty, independent and edgy. In contrast, the pink writing does show our feminine side as we are women that appeal the a male audience also.
  

Change of plan!

After feedback on my other digipack I decided to change it. I was told that it would look better if it had a photo of the band as the front cover and there were too many film strips.. must of got carried away there! 


I now prefer this one as with the feedback I took on board, I do think this looks more professional and portrays the band better. 


I changed the text to a more hard and edgy font as the italic was looking to feminine and reflected them as too girly. However, I kept the pink as it still shows they appeal to the male and female audience and enjoy doing this. 


I wanted to keep the barbie doll photos as it changes the digipack from being just about them and accompanies the band name seeing as this is there first single/album.    

Digipack...

Finally finished my digipack! I am really pleased with it as I think it resembles our band really well..

I wanted to use images from our video as the film strips add the the effect of real footage. I like the feel this gives off as it looks proffessional.

I used the 'B' for the tray holder as it is like a mini logo to represent us and everytime the CD is placed or taken out it reminds the owner of us.

Digipack..

This is my digipack so far!! Getting there now.

I wanted my digipack to have a similar theme to the video so I carried on the black and white and I used pink writing to give it a girly feel that also runs alongside the 'barbie' part of our band name.

I didn't want it to be too girly so I focused on the lighting of the images just like our video and the black and white adds to the edginess and mysterious side of our band.

VIDEO!!

We finally have our finished video! However, this one is out of sync as when transferred to a different file it moved. The orginal one would not upload to here so we've had to show this one!

Screening

Our screening went really well today and got many compliments. The teachers and peers views on our video were exactly how we wanted it to be portrayed. 
Here are some of the comments we got...


Miss Beere (Head of Sixth Form)
"Absolutely brilliant. Could be on MTV! Characters were fantastic and you all gelled together. The clothes and attitude portrayed the image intended"


Mrs Moore (Deputy Head and media teacher)
"Beautiful, slick and professional video, with fantastic performances and tight editing. Lovely lighting and overall and pleasure to watch"


It is such a good feeling to know that our original ideas that we first came up with successfully worked and what I imagined would be our video, actually was.