Holly's Evaluation

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

Our media product uses, develops and challenges different forms and conventions of real media products in a variety of different ways.  Before we started planning the media product, we had to do some research, because our genre was R&B/Pop, and was a typical boyband song, we looked at a variety of different artists such as JLS (themselves) and how they present themselves, Take That and Westlife.  We looked at the type of clothing they wear, we looked at some of their videos, in which we looked at the micro and macro elements, and we thought about how they had encorporated Goodwin's Points.  Our song choice was that of a typcical boyband song, in which we tried to make the music video and ancillary tasks look as professional as possible, in a way that would appeal to our audience (young teenage girls, maybe older women).  Throughout the music video we have tried to encorporate Goodwin's Points, which are; links between lyrics and music, links between lyrics and visuals, genre characteristics, intertextual reference, notions of looking, performance, narrative and concept based and finally demands from the record label.  I think that we have attempted for our media product to encorporate at least most of the points.  However, I think that some of Goodwins Points could have been done to a better standard, for example genre characteristics, we have tried to make the music video look cheesy and typical and be sterotypical, and I think that the locations and shot types work well, however I do think that the boys could have looked more like a boyband so they could have each had their own colour or worn matching t-shirts.  I also think that our media product uses Goodwin's Point of performance, narrative and concept based well, because our music video is performed, even though we don't really have a narrative, the performance makes up for it and we found that alot of boyband videos don't have a particular narrative to them.

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

The combination of our main product and ancillary texts work well as a promotional package,they do his by encorporating many of the same features, such as the same font on both ancillary texts, this shows that the media product has good Housestyle and when people see one of the ancillary tasks, they will automatically think of our music video and JLS as a boyband.  The image that we have tried to encorporate is that they are a sterotypical boyband, with the longing looks on their faces and them looking into the distance.  We have tried to make all 3 look like a promotional package by using images from our music video and we have used a picture for our magazine advert (the 3 boys walking away) from the music video.  When we wre doing our digi-pak it took us a while to find a suitable picture that fitted the shape of the dvd cover, therefore after trying out different images from the video we took in some advice from Holly and Nick and took a picture of the band in the forest setting (remembering to have continuity - wearing same clothes) - this worked much better, and the image that I feel we have created from our 3 products is that they are a typical boyband.

3) What have you learnt from your audience feeback?

Our feedback from our initial pitch wasn't as good as we had planned, mainly because our group found it hard to come up with suitable, sensible ideas.  We decided we either did a really 'cheesy pop boyband video' or a 'spoof video', I wasn't keen on the idea of a 'spoof video', but the group agreed and we decided to go with the typical 'cheesy' boyband video.  I think that this idea worked well.  When we presented our initial pitch to the class, they wanted to know if we had any intertextual references, where our locations would be and how we were going to make it conventional.  Our feedback from our rogh cut was mainly good, and people enjoyed the video, however, we hadn't quite finished the video and we didn't have enough footage, we were told that we should film some more, and in a different location, to film some more of the actors part (which we ended up taking out as this proved to be a difficult subject as the actor and actress were never free when we were and we ended up not having enough time to shoot out of lesson), so we had to delete this and fill it with some other footage.  We were also told that we should put in some split screens and add filters and colour effects.  I'm pleased that we went and shot in different locations as this gave us more footage and shot types.  Our feedback from our final cut was very pleasing, it showed that our hard work had paid off because everyone seemed to enjoy it, they especially thought that our lip syncing was very good and thought that we used a good variety of camera shots.  I think that the music video came out much better than we had all expected.

4) How did you used new media tenchnologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? 

Throughout our music video project we have used a variety of different technologies, we have used Final Cut, Photoshop and Blogger as well as the video camera and still camera.  We used Final Cut to produce the music video and we edited our music video on this as well.  Also on Final Cut we made our directors commentary and edited it.  We used Photoshop to create the two ancillary tasks, the magazine advert and digi pak, this proved to be one of the hardest new media technologies to use as not many of us had experience from it, but we all contributed with ideas but some of us were better than others at using it.  We used Blogger to record our research and planning stages as well as to upload the rough cut music video and final video as well as the 2 ancillary tasks and of course to show our evaluation.  We used the video camera to film all of our footage, and we used the stills cameras to take the photo for our digi pak, all of these new media technologies proved to be key in making sure we had a successful product.