Liam's Evaluation

Media Evaluation

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

We began to research other music videos from a similar genre too see if any of our initial ideas had any similarities with other professional media products. We then started to look at a few videos that fitted in with our idea which was that of a narrative music video, the videos that we looked at where ‘Rabbit in your headlights’ and ‘Bitter sweet symphony’ these videos seemed too relate to the ideas that we had for our video. Although the songs did have some lip-syncing but as our song is originally performed by females and our video idea was centred around one man we felt that the lip-syncing as the man was walking around would not work for obvious reasons. But we did feel that our idea would work with traditional media conventions without a performance element or any lip-syncing, although at the same time we felt that it would work well if we challenged some of the traditional media conventions but we did link what was going on in the lyrics to what was going on in the video. We also looked at Goodwin’s points as a guideline for our video, it helped us as it shows us how it challenges real media conventions as we felt our video did demonstrate real gender characteristics as in our video the main character was moping around the town on his way home as men would tend too keep there emotions to themselves, also when the main character steps out in front of the car and the driver gets out and shouts at our main character that would be quite a male characteristic to show aggression which the driver did do in that scene. Also the relationship between the lyrics/music and the visuals was quite strong as most of what was going on in the video had a good relationship to the lyrics. Also we did have in our video allot of close ups of the Artist and although there was no performance base the main character is one of the band members and so therefore there is a strong visual style of lots of close ups and shots of the artist, we also use allot of other varieties of shots to build up tension and get a feel of how the character is feeling and how he reacts too things. So it does use allot of real media conventions, and it does fit in with what Goodwin feels is part of a good music video.

All in all I feel that we have produced our video in a conventional way but have also challenged some ways which may be seen as the norm, I feel that it has worked and has been a successful product.

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

The mood of our main product (The music video) was quite a sombre and depressing mood and we got this across by making our video black and white and getting plenty of shots of our main character looking miserable too get the point across. This was done to fit with the lyrics to show how everything ‘went wrong.’ We then carried this across by using the same black and white effect used in the video in both of the ancillary texts, we also used good continuity across all of the pieces as we had the front cover of our CD case the picture on this was take on location at one of the scenes used in the video and then that front cover was also used on our poster. We also linked the who CD cover the alternative genre of music as it was kept to the same style as our video but also made it a bit different which is a bit like the style of music. We did have some feedback which felt that our CD cover was a bit random as it did have a couple of other people that where not in the video on it but they are members of the actual band, we felt that it did have significance to the whole thing and it also fitted well with real media products as often in many music videos the whole band does not feature in but there is often pictures of the band on the CD case.
The whole piece all together seems to all fit together as we have carried the whole theme across all three products, we also managed to use the same locations, people and costumes so there is a good level of continuity across all of out pieces which gives a good level of professionalism and does tie in with professional media products.

3. What have you learnt from audience feedback?

I felt that there was a lot to learn form our feedback, although in the main all of the feedback that we received was all very positive and it seemed as though the audience enjoyed our work, if there is something that the audience feel we could have done would only make the video better whether or not it would have been an idea that we may have done ourselves. The general feel from the audience feedback is that we should have had some performance based element in the video, but we believed that it would still work if we did have a pure narrative theme running throughout the whole video, and even after our rough-cut and it was felt we could have added a performance element into it would be allot more consistent to just have it as narrative. People also felt that a little more variation between scenes could have been used, but in answer to that we felt that the variation in shots within the scenes helped build up the suspense that was necessary and also got the feeling of the character across to the audience. Also we did add small pieces in between the scenes to add the drama and add more suspense to what was going to conclude our characters journey. It was also felt that the ending of our video could have been a little more conclusive, but we felt that leaving it how we did with our character getting attacked it would leave our audience to make up their minds on what happened to our character, also it left it on a bit cliff-hanger so the audience would be left thinking and would draw them too future videos too see the relevance if any, as some professional music videos do have a general them of each single released form an album.
From the video feedback the feeling is that it is generally all very positive and that people did like it, but it does seem as though the majority of the target audience would have like too of seen the whole band in the video and have had a performance element, although the narrative idea did work it could have made our video stronger and more appealing if there was more shots of the band performing. Also some other people did feel that the whole idea did work as the narrative idea did build suspense of what was going in the video and were able to concentrate on what was going on in the video without seeing the band performing the song they were able too keep focussed on what the story of the guy on his way home from work was.
There was other feedback too our digi-pack as well and people felt that we had carried the theme of the video across all of our sources of media and it was felt that this was a strong idea and that it was pulled of well. Also the fact that the costumes were carried across all of the media pieces and the main theme of the black and white.
All in all it is felt that people did like our digi-pack especially the relationship between that and the video. It was felt that more information could have been displayed on the poster and the CD cover but other than that people did seem to like it and the relationship between the pieces.

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

During the researching and planning stage we used various types of media technologies, we started by looking at music videos on YouTube of bands that we knew where of a similar indie route, we looked at these videos and developed our initial ideas through this, we then used things like Google to research into our band and visit the web page too look at there influences and their other videos. We also added some of our idea too the blogger.com site and on here we developed all of our ideas and we got feedback from the group.
When we got a bit further on with the planning stage we drew up or story board and took photos of it on PhotoBooth and then added them too blogger.com. Upon constructing our video we used programmes.