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.