Scott - Evaluation

Qu1. In What way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

‘Conventions’ is the term used to describe each different factor of a video/media production; similar to stereotypes they lead you towards what type/genre of media production you are watching. For example Alternative rock music videos consist of the following conventions – performance, comedy and a slight narrative. The song we chose (Pacific Ocean Blue by A) fitted with the alternative rock genre so we as a group were able to produce our product around the generic conventions. In our video we tried to use develop and challenge each of the conventions, we used a lot of performance shots which included us playing as a band in different locations (‘the Lock Up – Chesterton’ and ‘Sawston Village College Hall’) and in the same locations us playing our specified instruments singly in close up shots. We developed the comedy convention by massively implementing it, we did this by simply adding more comic shots such as ‘the box shot’ and us dancing with the public. During editing we tried to create the video with as much lip sync as possible while having as many comic shots as possible, this proved quite hard as every point where there was no singing and we wanted to add one of these shots we would find it difficult as we were trying to fit to on of Goodwin’s points ‘Relationship between lyrics and visual’. Our original plan to challenge the narrative convention was also disrupted by this point as we couldn’t leave out the narrative as we would then of missed out the point, to get around this we minimised the relationship between lyrics and visuals which became a very slight narrative. We know that the comic side of our music video worked from the feedback we received on our rough cut and we feel that we fitted our music video to the genre and conventions of alternative rock.

Qu2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

Overall we feel that our ancillary tasks and our main product worked quite effectively together. We tried to keep continuity between the two tasks, which I feel we did strongly, however our DVD cover and Magazine advert were very poor in terms of conventions, as we know we have failed to get them to the standard of the Main product. After we handed in our main product we spent too long evaluating it and writing on the Blog and before we knew it the deadline for the ancillary task was two lessons away, we spent one of these lessons taking photos for the task and the second lesson editing the photos on Photoshop, which concluded on us being very rushed for time. As none of us knew how to use Photoshop effectively this led to us becoming frustrated and effectively ruined our task. As we rushed to finish both the DVD cover and Magazine advert we ended up getting the information wrong and our magazine advert did not advertise our DVD, which it was supposed to of, We could have changed this by planning to spend more time on the task from the start of the project.

Qu3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our Audience feedback was very helpful and because of the feedback we received on our rough cut, which we posted on our Blog we were able to perfect our final piece. For example, the feed back we received on our rough cut told us that our sense of comedy was noted which was good news to us as we were worried that it would only be us who found the shots funny due to the fact that we all knew each other, and that we needed to include more close ups as we literally didn’t have any which meant there was little lip syncing and the band was not very well advertised. To combat this we went back to one of our performance area’s ‘The Lock Up’ and filmed close ups of each band member playing their instruments/Singing under many different filters of light and at many angles, which we then added into our final production using final cut. Feed back on the development of our final production after we had received the feedback on the rough cut then told us that we had improved our video drastically that the lip syncing was much improved and that overall we were now selling the band much more than previous. The feedback on our final product was very strong (apart from on the ancillary tasks but we knew we had messed up on that part of the project) and should we be asked to produce a similar task again I would make sure for the first lesson the whole group write a plan of all the deadlines and what needs to be done in what order and the whole group stick to it as I feel this is where we failed to compete.

Qu4. How did you use new media technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluating stages?

During the planning and evaluating stages of this production we used many new media technologies, including Blogger.com which was a massive contribution to this stage of the music video, as we were able to plan it in college and at home by posting all of our brain storms, ideas, final plans and generally all contributions to the video in terms of planning, we found this very useful as it meant we were able to continue working on our product with easy access to all of our class work and it also meant we wouldn’t have to remember any ideas you had for the product should you think of them while your at home (e.g. while your watching a music channel on TV) you could just type them down onto the Blog. As part of our assignment it was asked that we try and get permission by someone relevant to the band, to produce a music video to the song (it didn’t matter if we didn’t receive a reply but we had to show that we had tried), we found an email on twitter.com which led us to the band manager ‘Jason Perry’ whom to our surprise replied to our e-mail and gave us permission to create a music video to the song. We used more, different media technology through the construction and research stages of the assignment; during research we again used blogger.com to note down our finds and post our work/ rough cuts etc which led us to be able to receive feedback and gave us a bigger foothold to create and evaluate the productions, google.com to research Digipaks for our ancillary tasks which proved very helpful for finding the conventions of alternative rock Digipaks (Similar to video conventions – more of a narrative photo of whole band after/during performance) and youtube.com which we used to sample videos of alternative rock production, as our song currently has no music video (that we could find) we based our video on videos by such alternative rock bands such as ‘Blink 182’ and ‘Sum 41’. These bands led us to finding the perfect conventions to make stand out in our production via looking at their more successful songs, which led us to a more performance and comic convention rather than a narrative. We also used the programmes ‘Final Cut’ and ‘Photoshop’ to create our whole Assignment, final cut was the programme we used to create the video, our skills have improved over the time we have been studying media and we were able to use the effectively to create a strong video including lip syncing, filters and small effects such as fades in/out. Photoshop was used only for the Digipak, which unfortunately none of our group knew how to use despite all of us been doing media for at least fifteen months. We used Photoshop for its layering of images and its many effects, sadly we only had one lesson to finalise our Digipak and due to our lack of knowledge around the programme we were unable to produce a strong piece, and out of the whole project I feel we let ourselves down on the ancillary task. To combat this problem next time I suggest that we either commit to spending more time on the programmes we do not know much about. Or we could take the time out (e.g. after lesson) to learn our way around the problems we do not know how to fix with the programmes. However overall I feel we created a really strong media product and an effective assignment.