Evaluation! The boring part.

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

My music video is uses conventions of real media products by following the genre’s style of editing, cinematography and narrative. It allows for the audience to understand what type of music video it is and what genre it belongs to. However, I do also challenge the forms and conventions by also not following some of the genre’s most noticeable tropes. One of them includes the lack of use of 2D hand-drawn animation and replaced it with photographs I have taken instead.  I also made them in black and white to set a dark atmosphere. To keep consistent with the genre, I had also put the lyrics of the song within the music video, manipulating the text to relate to imagery as well as make it interesting and attention grabbing by making them “move”.

As for my subsidiary tasks, I have taken into account the amount of information I need to put onto for my audience from already existing media texts. For the magazine advert I have noticed that I need at least the title of the song as well as a date to indicate a release. I have decided to challenge forms and conventions by not adding a website address or any information regarding the creators of the song and the producer information. I have not put in. I did put these conventions in with my digipack though so that the product can relate to the digipack to other digipack. The font I have used develops the forms and conventions by fitting to the theme of my music video rather then using a font that is similar or mostly used in music videos, magazine adverts or digpacks. The use of colour on top of the monochrome imagery also help develop current form and conventions by showing how the text can break away from the imagery and show separate information that the audience can find easier to read and understand.

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

I believe that the effectiveness of my combination of my main product to my ancillary text is strong. I have used the same “style”/”theme” throughout, using a set of re-occuring themes to create links like the monochrome imagery, interesting font choices as well as the way the text is manipulated to create an illusion of movement. This can be seen within the music video where the text appear with the music and in different, surprising ways,  but this can also be seen with the digipack as well, the title of the song is separated and laid out on the model’s body. There are also a link with the style of imagery used, which all associate with the themes of the narrative of the music video, like identity and reactions to outside stimuli.

The three outcomes are not entirely the same however, as if they were I feel that it would’ve been a bad way to convey what exactly I wanted the audience to know, that this is a music video and the ancillary text were the products to sell it. Various other differences include features like the font choice, I particularly chose a more sketchy text for my subsidiary outcomes to create more of a sinister atmosphere when seen. Whilst in the music video, I did not use this style as I feel that it is quite hard to read and that might draw the audience’s attention too much.  Another difference is also the use of colour in my subsidiary task, something which I did not use in my music video to keep the consistency of my video throughout. The splash of colour in my subsidiary tasks help break up the information and helps draw the audience to specific points that I want them to see.

What have you learned from audience feedback?

I learnt quite a bit from my audience feedback, some of the responses that I was given did not match my own opinion on my music video, which is good since it shows that my music video can evoke a variety of different responses that are unique upon each viewer.

One feature that the audience liked was the editing of the music video. They believed that it helped with making the music more attractive as it is more catchy and exciting when timed with imagery. A few members of my audience however, did tell me that some of the editing was a bit too frantic and not in sync, but the majority was mainly together so the overall response was that the editing was a highlight.

Another feature that they enjoyed was the use of black and white imagery. They liked how it seemed similar to artistic photography and has the light effects of a dark noir movie, which is quite similar to the atmosphere of the music video and the audience said that it did help set the tone.

The audience has not only picked out features that helped me know I achieved the effect I have added in, but also effects that didn’t work and elements that needed improvement.

One improvement that the audience has stated was the way that the format of the imagery would change from portrait to landscape randomly. This would break the flow of movement and essentially break immersion of the audience.

Another suggestion was that my music video was too random, so some viewers may become confused and disoriented at the various elements along with the seemingly derivative storyline. 

The audience also felt that the outcomes that I have produced were "interesting" but overall would not target their age range or necessarily them personally. This can be considered as a problem since I was aiming to target that audience in the beginning. But the audience feedback also stated how it may only not target the mainstream audience, but perhaps a more niche audience, one that appeals to the style used in the subsidiary texts as well as the music video. This could help, as the next outcome I produce may rather shift focus on this niche audience rather then trying to appeal to all.

For the magazine advert and digipack, the audience suggested improvements on enhancing the contrasting as well as adding more surrealistic elements. If I was going to go far into making the product strange, the audience felt that I needed to push it to a level of almost ridiculous to make it likable.

In general I feel that the pros and cons of my products weigh out. Whilst individually they all have their own need of improvement, but together they create a easily grasped relationship and a unique style that is hard to find in the mainstream use of other similar products.

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

There are variety of media technology I used within my music video, including Final cut and photoshop. For photoshop I mainly used it to manipulate the images to enhance the quality and create some interesting effects to set tone and atmosphere, like improving the contrast and changing the colours to greyscale. It also allowed easy access to implementing text, which also means access to custom fonts, giving the outcomes more personality and character, this can also be taken with the different variety of brushes as well, so I can represent something like blood easily without spending a lot of time getting realistic blood. I also used a variety of online services to help with my research including blogger and youtube to help me put my work together. Blogger is simple and quick to use to quickly put my work together, whilst youtube allowed easy access to my videos from blogger as well. 

As for hardware I mainly used a camera rather then a video camera, as my video mainly comprised of images rather then videos, so I did not need to use a professional quality video camera. This was an advantage as I could easily take my camera around whilst other students found it much harder to take their camera around.

                                                                                          

Final Outcomes!

Here are the final outcomes. They went through a lot of revision as well as go through a lot of experimentation to get the way I wanted them to. Try and get what's the ongoing theme ahoy hoy.

A more detailed report on the similarities and experimentation will be given soon.