Evaluation: Essay

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

During our research we spent a lot of time researching common conventions in music videos of the same genre we were planning on doing in order to create a music video which is similar in some aspects to gain understanding and see what is generally expected from this genre which would allow us to challenge, develop and use these conventions. When trying to come up with a narrative for our music video we gained inspiration from a variety of genres, we done this because we didn't want to limit ourselves to Rn'B , we wanted to include a variety of aspects which would make our music video stand out and be different in comparison to others . Most of our inspiration came from music videos by our chosen artist ; Rihanna. This is because Rihanna has a variety of videos based on different experiences and narratives behind each song , however for the song that we chose by her did not have a narrative so this gave us the opportunity to experiment and use our imagination to create our own interpretation of what we thought the song was about .Our music video involves common conventions of real media products such as camera shots and angles , narrative etc. We have shots of her singing (medium shot) which is a common shot seen in most music videos.Whilst doing research we saw that most music videos are shot in colour which is common for most and with the narrative our story had we thought shooting it in black and white will really set the tone of the music video and reflect the meaning behind the lyrics.


Aspects other than our music video do reflect the same conventions of real media products such as our digipack which has an eye catching photo of the artist on the front cover with the name of the artist in bold going across the top centre or the cover which is common for most that we have researched Also the back of the Digipack includes the track names and bar codes which is also a common convention seen on real media products We also develop on some aspects for example on our website we made sure we included more images of the artist herself as we found in our research that some websites lacked this.
We also got most of our inspiration from music videos by our chosen artist which we put together and created a narrative , we also got inspiration from other artists as well.

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

We made sure that on our website we kept the logo throughout each product for example the logo on our website stayed the same throughout the website also on our digipack we ensured that we put the logo as we want the audience to know that the product is from the same company.The music  video was set in a umber of locations which shows her isolation and on the verge to insanity On the digipack the photo was of the artist with with her head leaning back and smoke coming out of her mouth, this symbolises and automatically shows that the girl is going through a hard time. Also throughout the creation of this product we kept the colour scheme the same as black and white we done this because we knew this will be a good aspect to add. these products were predominantly black and white or saturated in colour. Which all correlated to the idea we wanted to create for our artist with "noir" aspects. I believe that we have done this successfully and the audience will easily be able to identify these products as they are very similar to real media products.

What have you learned from your audience feedback ?

We were asked to conduct a questionnaire for our target audience which was given to them after they have seen all three products that my group produced. This was a very beneficial part as we were able to see what people thought of our music video and what aspects of it they thought was effective and not etc. In our questionnaire we asked questions such as do you think the story line was clear? What d you think we can improve? etc. After we received the results of this questionnaire we realised that there was a difference between gender preferences, Males didn't particularly enjoy some aspects of the music video such as the fact that it was all in black and white as they thought it was "boring" by getting this feedback we thought if we could change it we would make some parts in colour and the depressive moments in black and white so it doesn't get boring to the audience. However, we did find that the girls did enjoy the black and white filter that we used throughout as they  understood more why we chose to do this, we also noticed that when asked to explain what the storyline was girls explained it better and knew what exactly we were trying to portray and the emotions of the character etc. Whereas the boys did know what the narrative was about however they didn't really know what the artist was going through and they found it difficult to describe her emotions. From this I learned that our video mainly appealed to females as it was based on the problems that females go through e.g. domestic violence. 

Moreover , we found that some people thought that we included too much of the narrative and preferred if we showed more parts of the artist singing and some people thought we should have added a scene of what happened to the boyfriend at the end to see what he was feeling at the end when the girl has committed suicide. Furthermore , some also said that we shouldn't have repeated the scene of domestic violence the amount of times we did as they felt it became repetitive and that time cold have been used for something else . I learned from this that if we could improve anything we would add more scenes of the boyfriend and involve him more as he was the root cause for why the girl was feeling this way.

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

We had to use a number of media technologies throughout each stage of our coursework as we needed to conduct several things into our coursework , we had to use Prezi to create powerpoints for step by step presentations and while doing research on our artist etc. We also used garage band for making our radio spot , Photoshop for creating our digi pack and album cover and for editing photos for our blog etc. Photobooth was used for creating podcasts and filming audience reaction etc. We also had to use survey monkey throughout the three stages as we constantly had to conduct research to know what we should include in our music video and what the audience thought of our film ; evaluation stage. Lastly we used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit our music video which we have completely gotten use to as we ha the same software during our AS coursework , so sing this software wasn't really difficult for us a we have used it before , however we did learn new techniques which were quite difficult for us to use in the beginning as it was more advanced. 

For our research during the planning stage we had to use the internet to research our artist , and I used YouTube to research conventions of the Rn'B genre to gain ideas on what to do and what we should incorporate.For the construction stage, we most importantly had to use a camera to record our music video which we already knew how to use from last years coursework.Overall , I would say that my skills at using these media products ave improved as our teacher did teach us how to use them last year and this year it was easier for us to use these products and even teach ourselves new skills that we didn't need to include in last years coursework. However some products were harder than others to to get the hang of for example photoshop , this media technology was the hardest for me to use so tasks involving this were given to the advanced user of this product. In the Evaluation Stage , no new media technology introduced to us it was more a case of incorporating other products to this stage such as slideshare which was used to put power points on the blog. All of these products helped my group and I to produce our coursework to the standard that it is and I believe they all were necessary in doing so .