evaluation

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

Our media products from the start has deliberately aimed to conform to the conventions of a music video, magazine advert and a DVD cover in order to appeal to our target market. While planning we researched via YouTube, videos of solo male artists. This heavily influenced our video, resulting in it conforming to conventions used in the videos we looked at.

According to Goodwin the convention of a media video are: to identify the genre and represent the artist according to this, to present the video as a narrative performance or other (dependant on genre), to use micro elements to convey genre characteristics and sell the artist, to include the use of voyeurism keeping attention on the artist and to reference other media productions such as films.

The video itself follows convention by the main content of the video being a performance by the artist in various locations. Also the camera work focuses on framing the lead singer helping the viewer to engage with the artist.

The video includes a wide range of settings, something often done in professional videos. However by including an abstract shot in the range we slightly challenge genera conventions as stereotypically videos from the genera focuses on the artist in real settings. Our video focuses on the artist but the slow shot of leaves and a ripple in reverse gives an interesting variation not usually found in videos from the genera.

The music video advert continues to follow convention by relating to the music video by having a shot of the river Cam as the back drop for the advert. However the photo of the lead singer is an abstract shot influenced by James Blunt which continues the abstract theme; but this does not conform to conventions as the aim of the advert is to sell the artist, but with an unidentifiable photo this is not achieved and relies on the target market having seen the music video.

Including quotes such as “dragonfly is utterly mesmerizing. NME”, conforms to conventions of DVD adverts. These tag lines create hype for the video and give the public a professional’s opinion of the product. These techniques are consistently used in the media industry to improve sales figures.

The DVD cover also conforms to conventions. Initially we had intended to create a cover similar to this one by the Doors. But difficulties in Photoshop meant we could not create the desired effect so the cover was adapted to be a mild variation on the DVD advert. This conformed to conventions by making the link between the two ancillary products incredibly strong.

The information on the DVD is also conventional. It includes the artist and album name on the front, with track listings and bonus features mentioned on the back as well as copyright information, with a collage of images from the video on the 3rd side. This follows conventions by further selling the artist and having all the necessary information for a standard music DVD.

However due to the time limit given to create the product there was not time to include information on the spine. Nearly all DVD products created have information on the spine reducing the products conformity and marketing ability as while stacked the DVD will be unidentifiable.

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

In my opinion the 3 products look professional and individually fulfil their purpose with a good relationship between the 3. The production process has taken a prominent image from the video and developed it in an unconventional manner whilst still conforming to conventions. The image of the Cam is an unusual choice as it is not an image of the artist, but by having the silhouetted shot, similar to that of the one from James Blunt, "Back to Bedlam", it still manages to sell the artist. However this was not what we initialy planned to do. Originally we planned to use a shot of the lead singer on the punt surrounded by lanterns, however we had difficulties getting the lanterns and achieving the right camera angle, so we had to adapt our video to what we where able to achieve. This may not have been as good as what we had imagined but it was still an ok alternative.

We did create more than one DVD cover and advert; a few examples are to the left. But in the end we decided that although these do look good especially the red one, which is my favourite out of all the covers. As a group we had to discuss which cover to develop. We decided the top two don’t look professional and the Red one didn’t relate to our other products which would be a problem when trying to sell the DVD. So we decided to create a 4th version taking all the good points from the 3 and merging them together.


The video links well to the advert by including the same shot of the river Cam in both. This was a conscience decision as this was a prominent image from the video that was easily idenfitiable. However the advert is in black and white, which does make it easier to read than when it was in colour, but as the video has a stylized colour scheme, if I was doing this project again I would put the advert in the same colour scheme.

The video linked well to the DVD cover. Firstly the stylized colour scheme is continued in both. Also all the images used in the cover are taken from the music video, with the exception of the portrait of the lead singer which is taken from the advert. The DVD being 3 fold provides more room to show images of the singer but I feel we should have just shown the design for the front and back, as the 3rd side doesn’t fit in with the rest of the images.

The relation between the DVD cover and advert is also strong. With the same style of text being used in both products. Also the same image of the lead singer is used in both in a similar manor. The most obvious relation is that of the background in both the front of the DVD and advert (which is the use of the same image of the Cam) although one is in black and white, it makes the DVD easily identifiable from the advert.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Through out the creation of the product we have received feedback which has been useful and very influential in the creation of the final products.

When we initially pitched to create the video for this song we explained our initial idea. After this we received feedback on how we could make our idea of a video of the lead singer playing the guitar on the punt better. One comment was that we should use more that one setting as this would conform to conventions and prevent the music video from boring the viewer.

The feedback on the blog provided by Tom and Andrea was helpful in the planning process as it showed what we where missing and what we could do to benefit our products. For example “In order to enhance your blog further you need to embed your Auteur presentations”. This made sure we kept on top of the planning process and published everything we had done.

Also after completing the rough cut music video we received market feedback from the whole group on what they liked and what we could improve. This feedback was responsible for the abstract shots included in our video. As the audience mentioned that shots where too long and the video struggled to keep their interest as it was too slow and mundane. So we went out and filmed more footage to correct there problems. For example the falling leaf in slow motion and also the overlaying of the roundabout and Parkside crossroads shots. Without these shots our video would have seemed a lot longer and struggled to keep the viewers attention.

When we had completed our final video we also received feedback from the whole class again, not to make us realise what we could have done with the video but to help provide ideas and inspiration for the two ancillary products. If you look at our blog at http://05musicvideo09.blogspot.com/ you can see that before the feedback we had no intention of including the leaf shot in either product but afterwards it became a key shot to have. However communication difficulties meant that only the DVD included this shot, so if I was to do this project again I would try and include the leaf shot in both ancillery products.

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

Without new media technologies our project would have followed a very different path. Firstly there would have been no blog to help us visualise the planning process and bring all our ideas together.

Also while recording we used portable loud speakers to make sure that the song was sung in time and later when we came to the editing process we could mark up both audio tracks and easily line the two up, as long as the video clip was in sync with its audio track which on a few occasions it wasn’t.

As well as this we used digital cameras with SD cards to take a photo shoot which gave us images to use in both the advert and DVD. With out this we would have had to scan the images into the computer which would have been far too time consuming.

During the project we used YouTube to find and research videos by artists similar to ours or similar videos to what we hoped to create. For example we regularly looked up James Blunts’ and time lapses of sunsets and traffic. We hoped to include a time lapse of traffic and of a sunset in our video, however the camera we had didn’t have the ability to do this and we could only create a ghosting effect which we settled for but wasn’t what we really wanted as it didn’t flow as smoothly as a time lapse.

We were also dependant on the internet for gathering information on the artist. We used MySpace, an online social networking site, to contact the band to let them know what we where doing and give them the chance to have their input into the planning of the video and also find out what type of people listened to their music. As well as this we used bbc weather online to make sure the days we planned to film would be ok weather wise, although the information was not 100% reliable, it gave us a rough impression of what the weather was going to do and that it was ok to film. As well as this the group used Facebook to communicate with each other in-between lessons so that we could discuss ideas and when to put in extra work.

We also used the internet together with YouTube and Blogger.com to publish our work so we could receive wide feedback for our target market. This was helpful as we could develop the product to comply with what the market wanted.