Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The audience feedback that we have received from our teacher and fellow students has been very helpful when working on our improvements. Each person who has watched each rough cut has given us 3-4 comments, some have given even more. The comments were both positive and negative, which helped us more as we could then see what elements of the video were popular with other people, and what bits weren't as popular and needed changing.

Our first rough cut :

• Firstly during the editing process we suffered from transition malfunctions which meant we had large portions of our video with a black screen. We saw this as an obvious fault and was something we needed to focus upon quickly to correct.

Rough cut two:

• Here is our rough cut two, we had corrected the previous fault of the large portions of black screen which was a positive, however there are still faults. A main one here is that we decided some shots were in the wrong place and the timing of them was wrong also. This meant we were left here with a very unprofessional look to our video. This is a hard fault to fix within a group as everyone has different opinions to what they want the video to look like so making everyone happy in the group is hard to achieve but very important.

Rough cut 3:

• In this clip we used all our previous feedback from our target audience and improved a lot of the video, however flaws were still present. On many of the shots we had by mistake left the audio on the background from our filming which meant it in some places got in the way of actual song itself and sounded very unprofessional. This was an easy fault to fix but a very important one as it was the difference from a professional music video and a very basic one. at this point the feedback given from our audience was very beneficial as it helped us pick out a small fault.

Final cut:

• Here is our final cut for our music video, we used all feedback from both peers, teachers and our target audience to bring it all together. Here we feel we have eradicated all major mistake and most small mistakes to create a professional final product.  I believe having feedback was very important because it helped us pick up on mistakes we didn't necessarily notice, this meant we could create a much more professional looking video.   

Evaluation - Question 2

How effective is the combination of the main product (your music video) and ancillary tasks (digipak and magazine advert)?

All of the products that we made for the task, the music video, the digipak and the magazine advert, are all linked together, as the ancillary tasks both have pictures of our artist on them, who is located in an outside locations. These are then linked to our main product as the performance shots that are in the main product are located in the same places as on the photos, therefore linking the products together.

To link the main product with our two ancillary products, we used a consistent house style, by using similar images on the digipak and magazine advertisement to which the audience can see in the music video. By doing this, it made it very clear that all the products were linked.

Also to link the digipak and magazine advertisement, we have used the same font, which helps make it consistent and therefore the audience links that particular text to our product. Also we have put our own logo on both so that the audience can again identify a clear link between them.     

throughout the production of our magazine advert we did make various changes to it to improve it and ensure its the best it can be. the changes we made to it were that we changed the font, originally it was a lot larger and a different font all together, the changes we made were positive and we made them through the use of audience feedback.

We also made changes to the digipak, we originally were going to use different images to what are now on it currently. the reason we changed this was to keep the continuity on both products the same. So the audience can see a link between all of the products.

Evaluation - Question 4

 

Evaluation Question 1

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

Conventions of real media texts are the certain items/props etc. that you would expect to find in a media text before actually seeing one. For example, several conventions for a music video for a rock band would be performance shots of the group all together, a live crowd, and bizarre clothing on the band members, as these are things that an audience would expect to see, before physically seeing the video.

For our media product, we took on board all the research we gathered to then help us include key conventions of our genre, pop/rock. For example in our research we looked into Daniel Powter's song Bad Day as it followed a similar pattern as what we would like ours to, with a clear narrative and key prop conventions such as the piano. These would help the audience realise the genre of the song and also promote our artist.   

We as a group decided clothing within our video on the characters would be an extremely important area to look at, especially our actor who was playing the role of James Blunt. We made sure he was always wearing mature styled clothing so that our audience would be able to identify our genre and narrative easily. We discovered these themes from watching previous Jams Blunt videos and also other videos in the same genre. For example the screen shot image below shows James Blunt wearing clothing similar to the clothing we have chosen for our music video. The screenshot below the James Blunt video is of our own video, we have made our main character wear a leather jacket just like James Blunt.

 

 

Another area we found important to look at was the setting where we would be filming. This was important as it had to match the genre of our song. We used a variety of slow scenic shots which went well with our slow paced song. We also used some shots of the setting to match the song with the visuals, by doing this it allows the audience to interact with the song and get a feel for the genre.

Throughout our video we used a variety of close up shots on our artist, this helps the promotion of both the song itself and the artist. We felt it was necessary to include this as most songs in the same genre follow this theme, it again helps the audience identify the genre clearly. 

In conclusion I feel our song uses a variety of key conventions throughout to help the audience identify the genre clearly. We decided not to challenge any conventions as we thought that if we leave any out, it may look like we have not actually researched in detail as to what the generic conventions for our chosen genre actually are; therefore effecting our final grade. Also by doing our video in this style I feel it gave our final outcome a more professional look to it.

 

Analysis of Music Video from Chosen Genre

For this task I will be analysing a music video. The video I will be analysing will be “Bad Day” by Daniel Powter”.

Bad Day-

The reasoning for me choosing this music video to analyse is because it is of the same genre of the artist we have chosen to use for our music video. It is the genre of ‘pop’ and  is similar to James blunt. By analysing this music video it is going to mean we might see certain characteristics of the genre within music videos which we might want to use within ours. It also may give us ideas of the style of the music video we use.

 This music videos follows the Todorov theory however it starts at the second stage and ends on the first. So it starts with a problem but ends happy. The narrative is about a man and a women who are going through their day to day life and they are both not happy. They then end up meeting each other towards the end and it turns out to be a happy ending.

 What I liked about this music video is that at the start, it showed the life of the people using three different shots of the same action showing that they are doing the same thing every day. For example they would leave their flat and this shot would repeat 3 times in a row but with different costumes so the audience realise what is going on. This example was shown about 30 seconds into the video however there are more examples beforehand. This could be done by our group when we come to make our music video because we are capable of doing that using the equipment we have. I think it also brings something different to the music video as not many artists have used this.
 

 

The lighting for this music video uses natural lighting which connotes to the audience that what is happening is quite real meaning you can relate to the music video and understand it. For example you might have had days like this when it is not going to well.
Unlike the music video “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt, the character is not played by the artist however Daniel Powter is shown in the clip lots of times in order to promote himself by the audience knowing who he is. He is shown performing a variety of instruments whilst singing.

The editing of this music video is good because it uses split screens. I think this is good because the split screens help to show the audience that time is passing through because again she is doing the same action over and over again which looks like different days. For example in the picture below it shows a triple split screen of her doing her make up making it seem like three days have passed so the audience know the same thing is happening every day and it connotes she might be bored of life.

 

In conclusion of this music video, I think they used the editing really well and it has given me some ideas of what I could incorporate within our music video.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Analysis of Magazine Advertisement by Artist

Here is a magazine advertisement used by James Blunt to promote his album 'All the lost souls'. The advert has James' name in a large font across the top with the album name just underneath, this makes it very clear to the target audience who the album is by and the name of the album. I will try to incorporate this into my magazine advertisement because I feel it is a very clear effective way of promoting James Blunt. I also like the contrast of bright and dark colours they use to make this advert the black background works well with the picture of James' face in the middle this draws all attention to his face. Also the red writing brings the audiences attention in because it is a bright colour that is different to the rest of the writing on the advert the audience tend to look at this first. I've decided I wont put the date of release on the advert as this may confuse the target audience due to the track/album already being released.  

Plan For Magazine Advertisement

Here is a magazine advertisement I have made to promote James Blunts song 'Goodbye My Lover'. I've decided to keep a very dark mysterious design to the advert because I feel this specific song is quite depressing filled with emotion. The dark silhouette connotes this mystery, the title of the song 'Goodbye my lover' makes the audience wonder who the 'lover' is and this is where I feel the mystery comes from. The advert i feel should be promoting James Blunts name the most therefore I have put his name in a large font right at the top of the advert so its unnoticeable. I've decided to put our logo in the bottom left of the advert this acts as promotion to our personal record label, it will trigger interest within our target audience.