Evaluation Question 1

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

Here we can see how our music video uses, develops or challenges the conventions of real media products.

- PERFORMANCE SHOTS
In your typical music video you would see performance shots which would have sole focus on the star. The lighting and backdrop should all be there to emphasise the star in the performance. For example in ours, we used a simple white back drop which let the artist stand out clearly. It also has a good contrast compared to the rest of the music video which is seen to be quite dark. One of the lights were shining on the backdrop which meant that the star stood out and didn't blend in, whilst the other light was shining to the side of the star to create a silhouette on one half of his face. We also created a shot which meant that the light box was behind the star which showed his features and created a desirable image.

- RHYTHMIC CUTTING
The rhythmic cutting is used in all music videos to fit with the emotion and theme. In ours we used rhythmic cutting to build up suspense before the chorus and then to slow it back down before it hit the bridge part of the song. We switched from this idea throughout the video so that we could show more shots that fit to the narrative. The narrative shots were a lot longer and showed more emotion on the character's faces and their actions.

- RED CUP PARTY
A 'red cup party' is typically an American party which features the classic red cup. This can be seen in the Afrojack music video, Summer, where the actors are seen dancing with red cups and with each other. This is why we decided to link the club scene with red cups as we thought it would show how realistic the club was. We have been told many times that the red cups actually made the clip work, that it completed the idea.

- REBELLION
The scenes of smoking and the bedroom a scenes are not typical of your pop music video as it would have to reach out to a wide age bracket. This meant that we were challenging conventions when we decided to link in clips from Cambridge and the Hotel Room which were particularly rebellious. We thought the rebellion was important in this video as the lyrics write a lot about rebellious activities and we wanted to have a strong lyric to video cohesion.

- NOT TYPICAL LOVE STORY
In a pop music video, you almost always have a love story that features throughout. This was an important aspect of our own music video, however our love story wasn't particularly conventional. In a pop music video you will see a love story that shows the beginnings of a relationship or the endings. In ours you see a relationship that isn't normally excepted by wider society but because of the nature of the song, it fit perfectly with our narrative.

- SOLD OUT STICKERS
Moving onto the digipak, we used images that we took when filming at our different locations to create a cohesion between our media products. We created a tour poster and a CD case which meant that we were able to use many different images and ideas to see what fit with our theme best. The tour poster had a number of locations and dates on which we then covered with 'sold out' stickers. This is used on many different tour poster to not only offer information, but to ensure the audience know that the audience is desirable.

- PROMOTION OF OWN ALBUM
We also made sure that our album and poster were cohesive, alongside the video. We made sure that when we created the poster, that we included the image of our own CD cover so to promote the CD. This combo is seen a lot on other tour posters as it is a simple and cheap way of selling two products at once.



(This will be a split screen video with myself and other clips.)

Evaluation Question 2

Main contribution by Esther

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

During the developmental process of producing our music video, we decided to produce a survey monkey to gather various information to develop our knowledge of the type of audience we were presenting it too. Questions asked were some such as "Whats your favourite band?" "what age are you?" What genre of music do enjoy?" and these questions really helped us find us the best way to get to our target audience. In terms of the type of people that would watch our music video, we found that they were of an age range between 18-30, meaning that we were able to make it more mature for that audience. We also found that the people watching were pretty 50/50 male an female meaning that we had too consider both a song male and female star image. 

Survey Monkey itself is a free website in which you can produce multiple questions to a survey with personalised answers. We were then able to post it on social media so we were able to reach a large platform of people and get a multitude of answers. 

- This would be a development from our previous market research but we would still use SurveyMonkey to collect responses from our audience. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Once we had completed our rough cut we presented to it to the class to get feed back from other media students. Our feedback included comments such as a few timing issues when we didn't cut exactly to the beat and a few colour corrections but other than that everyone seemed impressed with the brief outcome. Survey monkey was also the website of choice because they were able to provide us with graphs and pre formatted meaning we were able to get a clear indication of our target audience. 



Survey monkey provides us with emails saying when we have new audience feedback meaning we were able to constantly improve our audience feedback constantly.

We really liked this approach and I feel like this is an application we will use in the future. 

Evaluation Question 4

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


Ella-Survey Monkey
Est-Final Cut 10
Anna-Photoshop
Ella-Equipment
Est-Blogger
Anna-YouTube

Me: 

To edit our Digipak and Advert we used Adobe Photoshop. This allowed us to use a wide range of effects and techniques to make our Advert and Digipak seem very professional. We mainly used Photoshop one we had planned and researched both of the products, so we mainly used it in the production stage of our video. If we didn't use photoshop to create the Digipak and Advert we think that the outcomes would not of been as strong and may have lacked a professional, finished look. 

We used YouTube to research music videos to influence our ideas. So it was an essential technology to use in the initial research and planning stage. Then after we had created our first rough cut, we then uploaded it to YouTube. This therefore allowed us to show our class easily and then get feedback from them.

Ella:

Survey Monkey allowed us to gather information on what our video should include, for example how much narrative there should be in comparison to performance. We were able to share the survey to a wide target audience from being able to share the link on a social media website which was Facebook. 

We used a range of equipment to achieve the highest quality music video and product. We used a DSLR which enabled us to create high quality shots with strong depths of field. This also allowed us to have high quality images for our digipak. The tripod was used in the performance shots to create shots that conformed to pop music video conventions. At other times we didn't use a tripod to create a non static image that fitted with the flow of the music. 

Esther:

Final Cut 10 was the software that we used to edit and produce our final music video including the rough cut. It allowed us to explore various features such as slo motion which we used throughout the music video. It also allowed us to colour correct any shots which matched the indie/pop convention, it helped us also continue the effective continuity. As apposed to when we edited last year, editing was a lot easier with using the updated software. 

Blogger has allowed us to document our progress and development of our music video and digipak. We have been able to show the progression of our work through posts about editing  research and planning. It has also allowed us to incorporate YouTube videos, powerpoint presentations and surveys which enabled us to have all of the technologies in one place. 


(This script will be a voiceover on our video)

Evaluation Question 3

Main contribution by myself. 
3. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

(Transcript from presentation)
Our video and the genre:
Overall:
Overall we felt that we comined all of our skills and resources together to create a strong video and ancillary pieces. We used the genre as our main reference point when making decisions on whether it will 
'What Would You Do'-By Bastille (Final video)
Genre-Indie/Pop
After researching what genre Bastille class themselves as, we gather that they fall under the Indie/Pop genre. We decided to follow a lot of the conventions associated with this genre. After looking at some of their videos and knowledge of the genre, we gathered some conventions that are in the Indie/Pop genre. For example the videos are lit a lot darker in comparison to a Pop music video and we wanted to continue this through both our Video and Ancillary texts. A few of their videos have a narrative theme instead of performance, but there is a quirky theme that runs throughout most of their videos. For example, the video for 'Oblivion' is mainly performance, but instead of the main singer lip syncing, they have a actress singing. This continues the convention that artists in the Indie/Pop genre will have quirky music videos.
Relations between the video and poster:
We decided that Miles would be the main focus on the poster, even though he is part of the band we felt that the main singer should be the only person on the cover. He is also the star image in the video, so we felt that we could create that link between them. We took the photo that is on the poster when we were filming on location, so this links to the 'What Would You Do' video. As we did in the video, we continued the theme to de-saturate the image to give it a raw effect. I think this is really effective and makes the male actor have the star image. We didn't want the girl to feature on the poster because she isn't the main focus of the album, only the song 'What Would You Do'. 
Relations between the video and digipak:
Similarly to the relationship between the video and the poster, we wanted the main singer to be the focus of the digipak. We looked at Bastilles album 'Bad Blood' and this album cover only had the main singer on it, so we felt that it was acceptable to only have the main singer on our digipak. We also wanted there to be some light painting in the digipak to differ from the shots of the actor/actress. Even though there isn't anything like this in the video, we felt as a group that it still worked in the Indie/Pop genre. We also took photos for the digipak when we filmed the performance section to the video, so there is a link between those two shots. 
'Miles' (Final Digipak)
'Miles' Tour poster
Final product and Ancillary Texts:
'Pompeii'-Bastille
'Things we lost in the fire'-Bastille
'Oblivion'-Bastille
We continued the typical characteristics of a Indie/Pop genre video. Keeping the theme running throughout it quite different and serious. We really wanted to have both performance and narrative shots to tell the story but then also link the two together so it didn't seem too divided. The girl in the video represents the sad part to the story and I think it works really well with the main singer acting as her support. I think that this would be something that Bastille would do. We also de-saturated the colour of a lot of the shots as we felt that this followed conventions of the Indie/Pop genre. As well as following this convention I think it has given a rawness to the video, making the girl seem even more vulnerable.

FINAL VIDEO-'What Would You Do' By Bastille

CREATED, EDITED AND PRODUCED BY ANNA CURRAN, ESTHER GRIMWOOD AND ELLA SANDERS 
MYSELF:MISE-EN-SCÉNE/LIGHTING
ESTHER GRIMWOOD:CINEMATOGRAPHY
ELLA SANDERS:EDITING

This is our final music video. To ensure that weren't subject to copyright infringement, we had to make sure that in the bio of the video on YouTube that we stated that the music used was not ours. (See photo)

Editing-Final touches

To complete our video we had to add titles, these would be on the name of the song and who edited, produced and directed the video. We felt that they should be at different times in the music video, with the name of the song coming first. This has been staggered in with the beat of the music to carry on the themes of following to the beat of the music. It also made it a lot more interesting to look at. We added the other title at the end of the film when the camera goes out of focus. 

Editing-Jump cuts

After our audience feedback we were able to add in our final clips and edit them. We decided to go with what the audience said and edit the clips to the beat of the music and create the jump cuts. I think that this has been really effective because it has linked the video together and made it a lot smoother. The original change between the faster and slower shots just didn't work, so the audience feedback was really helpful.