Aggie's Evaluation

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

Our media product reflects an 80's electro theme continuously throughout the ancillary texts and our music video. We used several techniques to portray this theme. One of which was using fast paced editing throughout our music video to create the effect of fast movement. We used fast paced editing as it relates well to our upbeat track 'Call me up' by Chromeo and it ensures the audience remains entertained when watching the video as the image changes a lot. In addition to this it is a common convention used in current popular music videos with upbeat soundtracks. Other techniques we used in our music video which we had gained inspiration from other music videos were ones such as our mirroring technique which we used on a shot of one of the artists holding the phone, this creates an image which is more visually appealing and we know this as it is used in music videos by popular artists, such as beyonce's 1+1 video. We have also used/challenged current music videos by constantly using Goodwins points by making sure our music and visuals relate. For instance towards the beginning of our music video we have repeated images of a dance movement one of our artist had done, we repeated these images and changed the speed on them and fitted the images in the places which would sound best in relation to our soundtrack. We focused a lot on the link between music and visuals continuously using different, shorter shots because we thought this was particularly important for entertainment purposes. We also had good lyrics and visuals , like most current music videos in the media do, for instance we would show an image of the phone when the lyrics 'Call me up' were being synched. However unlike many current music videos we didn't have a strong narrative although we had good lyrics and visuals.

We also analysed products from the band Alphabeat which has also portrayed the similar 80's electro theme that our group has, throughout their images and videos. We interpreted what kind of mood and image they were trying to portray to the audience through their continuous use of bright colours and unique images and challened it by making ours seem more bold in comparison.

How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary texts? The combination of our main product and ancillary texts is extremely effective as they all relate well together and produce the same concept for the audience. This is because throughout the ancillary texts we use neon yellow font as the main text to sell our products. We did this as it reflects the name of our album ‘neon sun’ that we will be promoting to the consumer. As well as using the same bright texr we have also continued to use bright colours throughout our ancillary texts, the cd album cover and the magazine ad, to continue our pitch of the 80’s concept we want to sell to the consumer. This is ensuring that the consumers are reminded of the theme our music and artists represent. The image our promotional package creates of the artist is one that is bold and funky. This is because the magazine cover is unique with how bright and neon the colours are that are featured within the image . Our image that we use in the magazine advert also shows four figures, which aren’t clearly seen, which also makes it more exciting for the consumer to want to watch the video to find out the real images of the artist. Also the use of all four figures on the magazine ad, unlike the cd cover, clarifies that the artist is a group , and not single. We use other images on our cd album cover, such as ella holding the phone as this is a noticeable image taken from our music video, we did this to ensure that our hit single is being represent on our cd cover. Our promotional package are successful at attracting the target audience, ( younger audience, from teenager years to late twenties) because they outline clearly in bold writing the dates in which the artist intends to tour and where it will be located. In addition to this our magazine advert displays that the artists got a 5* review from a popular, formal music magazine. This would appeal to the consumer as it implies that the music has potential to be popular. What have you learnt from your audience feedback? We received very good feedback from peers in our class. They claimed we had strongly applied our main product to Goodwin’s points by relating music and visuals and lyrics and visuals to each other throughout our music video. This was important to our group as we wanted to ensure our video wouldn’t bore our audience if we had too little shots , as the beat is very fast. We were also given good feedback on our use of imagery , for instance bright colours and bold font , as it relates well to our theme. Furthermore we were told we made good use of the green screen , as we took advantage of this bland background and changed the colour of the screen every time a shot appeared on screen, this ensured the audience was entertained when our shots repeated with the green screen. Other positive feedback we received was on our use of varied props for our main product. Our use of the phone, phonebox and picture ensured that we got good feedback on our mise en scene as it makes the 80’s setting and activity occurring in the video seem more realistic. In addition to this our costumes were apparently fitting with our theme and they had no criticisms for them. Negative feedback we received for our main product was that there isn’t much of a narrative to our music video, which is true in comparison to some current music videos of today. However the shot shorts which can appear random and chopped up reflect the fast beat of our song and as the lyrics ‘call me up’ are repeated a lot , we thought it would be best not to produce a strong narrative as we wouldn’t be able to follow Goodwin’s theory as strongly as we have. Another criticism we received was that our lip synching in places could have been improved, but was overall good. Also we were told some of our shots were a bit blurry and could be made clearer if we were going to improve it. However we did intend for a couple of our ‘dancing shots to be blurry as this indicates more of a ‘disco’ environment.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Our main media technology we used to produce our music video was the programme Final Cut. Final Cut first of all enabled us to easily and sufficiently download all of our rough footage onto the computer quickly. By being quick to download it meant our group had more time to edit footage. We were able to place our footage on to a timeline which displayed all of our work clearly, so we knew how much we had done and how much more we had to accomplish. We could also use this timeline to move our soundtrack around , and move our footage around and place effects on different lines above shots that we wanted to have a technique. In addition to this the use of movement was what enabled our group to be able to check that the lip synching was correct. Final cut was also really good for the use of editing footage , we were able to speed up or slow down clips which we needed to change to visually appeal to the audience more, or to fill/reduce a certain space or gap. We were also able to change the colour of the green screen background by using this programme as it had the feature colour corrector. We could also add in text as well as editing original footage, we found this extremely useful and the text within our music video is a major part of our product as it is unique. One of the main technical programmes we used which was featured on the apple mac was Photoshop. We used this programme for the production of our CD album cover and for the Magazine advert . We used features on the programme that helped us edit and adapt specific parts of our promotional package more easily than any other programme would have, for instance it helped us focus more on the colour and the font. We used Photoshop to repeat the main image we used of Ella on the CD album cover , which created a unique effect. We used the internet, by using websites such as Blogger to continuously update the stage that our group was at with our work and our research into current music videos/ We would collect ideas for our main product and ancillary texts and display them on Blogger. We could then discuss in class, in our groups which ideas we thought would look best by reflecting over what we had originally posted on the page. Blogger enabled our group to reflect over any forgotten work or progress we intended to make/achieve by the end of the production of our main product. We also used Google to research into inspirational ideas for our main product and ancillary texts. Also to compare our main product and ancillary texts to present day music videos and promotional packages. We used good equipment for our music video to ensure the best possible visuals for our audience, because we clearly would want to make our music video appeal to them , to sell the artist. We did this by using HD cameras and a tripod. The HD cameras ensured that the audience had good visual quality as all of the shots that were featured in the video would be clear, and define colour clearly. The use of the tripod meant that our shots were steady, as shaky shots, which aren’t purposefully meant to be handheld look unprofessional. In addition to this the use of the tripod meant that our group could easily achieve varied shots, such as canted angles and high or low angles, as the use of the tripod means that the camera can adapt to different angles easily.