Final Evaluation

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

Our media product was of the alternate rock genre, and we took forms of other similar products, for example we were heavily influence by Blink 182 and Sum 41. We took characteristics from select videos, and portrayed them in our own. From studying 'Goodwin's Theory of Analysis', we were able to relate genre characteristics from other videos and adapt them into ours. A typical form we used from rock videos was: performance, and we used this for half of our product. And the other half was: lifestyle, we put this in for extra entertainment value to the audience, as the footage is quite comical. Our locations were conventional, as we used some band rehearsal rooms and a stage at Sawston Village College. By using these locations and then the town centre we were able to easily fit our footage around our genre specifics. I don't think we really challenged our genre, although the clip of us all climbing from the same box could be considered as uncharacteristic. We added this though for pure entertainment value as we wanted to reflect our personalities in the video, and we felt that alternative rock allowed us to do this. Otherwise we stuck to guidelines from our area, like the use of band mise en scene like instruments, and stage settings. The close ups of the artist, and complete artist focus, makes the band easily remembered. Through the comedy element of our video, we promoted the band with the comedic and relaxed atmosphere. By not having a crazed feel to the footage and transitions, we could draw the audience in to just enjoy the comedy without having to think too much. I would consider myself to be a member of our video’s target audience, and I think it’s attractive to watch because of its entertainment value. It vaguely represents shows like jackass, as it’s a fun and laid back viewing to give the audience a feel good viewing. We developed two sides of the video throughout, the performance and lifestyle sides, adding different clips from each side as the video progressed. There isn't an area where too many clips from the same side are stacked next to each other; we felt this would have the potential to bore the audience. The two real media products we based our video on were 'Rock Show' and 'In Too Deep'.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

I personally felt we could have done a lot better on our ancillary tasks, but if nothing else we did get the element of continuity between them, and between them both and our video. We used pictures from a shoot we did at The Junction to promote the band members, like we had done throughout the video. We chose this location as it’s a popular venue in Cambridge, which directly relates to our genre and promotes it; a lot of upcoming and popular bands play there. We kept to a basic background on both the DVD cover and magazine cover to vocalise the band, this way you'd easily be able to identify our ancillary tasks with the video. We also used the flaming A which is the bands signature, if the audience knew the band this would have appealed to them in particular. The products do however work together to promote one another, again through the same colour choices and continuity of the A and band photos. The advert doesn’t promote the DVD as strongly as it could have done, as we included tour dates also, which takes the sting out of the advert. But it does have reference for when the DVD is available, and the DVD then promotes the band by use of pictures that will be recognisable to the audience. We decided to go for a simple colour scheme quite simply because we didn’t have the right skills to get what we wanted into photo shop. I think we would have gone for a more elaborate, stand out background if we had the choice to show the extrovert sense to the band. The tasks do promote the same feel as the video also, that being relaxed and band focussed by being photographs of the band in their everyday lifestyle. The magazine article promotes the record label by visually aiding it on the décor. These adverts would appeal to a new audience as they promote the band and album in a way that would make the audience recognise the genre through the design and to listen to their music.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Primarily we had to pitch for our song to the rest of the group, and our feedback from the pitch was pretty positive. They thought that the research we had done towards our locations and mise en scene would help in the future filming we would have to do. Although they did also say we would have to develop a stronger plot for our video, as our main ideas were a little bit scatty. Our feedback was mainly from members of the group, and Holly (media teacher). Although not all of them were relevant for our target audience, to study media we have had to learn to fit ourselves into any audience to be able to evaluate products more efficiently. We have all done a video preliminary so their knowledge was valuable to us. From our rough-cut feedback we gained a lot of welcomed knowledge. People thought we’d hit the nail on the head when shooting for our genre, and the amount of research we had done on location and props really helped the outcome of our video. But from the first lot of feedback we had also been given areas to improve on, and this was mainly to prioritise band members with close ups, and to only use long shots when they were really needed. To add to that we needed more lip syncing footage our vocals, we took all of these things into consideration when we went for our second footage shoot. The feedback we got was really helpful in order for us to make progress and produce our final piece. From our ancillary task we got feedback we expected, the other groups correctly analysed the problems with our pack that we knew were there but had no time to change. It was overall disappointing that we didn’t have time to change the things highlighted to us. If we were to do our main video again, we might get more valuable shots from the stage performance sides, as we looked a little unprepared and we were lucky to get the mise en scene there that was necessary.

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

The main resources for the planning and research elements were the blog the media groups used and ‘You tube.’ These sites were of particular importance as they gave us a source for finding previous music video’s done at the college, and real existing ones. The blog was the entity of the project though, as this is where we published all of our planning, research, and anything else that came to mind in the lead up to our final product. Being able to see and talk about other videos whilst not in the classroom really helped us adapt our own ideas. With these sites as well, I was able to upload a video of me teaching the guitar parts to our group, so we could re-enact them better in our video. This proved helpful, as Scott isn’t able to actually play guitar. Another program that was essential for us to make any advance on our project was ‘Final Cut.’ This is a program that allowed us to merge, cut and add effects to the footage we had caught on our shoots. Our abilities using the program had been progressing as we continually used it in media, and this helped when chopping up long clips we had captured, most of which we didn’t use. A specific thing that has developed for me from AS is the use of markers in effect so you can get exactly what you want from it. The program we used for our ancillary task is called: ‘Photoshop’ this program was ill favoured throughout the group, as our ability to use this it wasn’t high. But from the experience I think we gained experience on how to use if we are ever called to again. Although it wasn’t our favourite piece of new media technology, it was essential to amalgamate our DVD and magazine add effectively. Last year, we did a preliminary task where we a short music video. This really prepared us for the main task, as it showed us just how much footage we needed to create our product. I think we advanced from the preliminary task as we used much more lip-syncing, and we related our music to visuals more effectively.