Sam's Evaluation

Q1)

For our meida products we decided to choose a stereotypical view of a boyband. The song we decided to use was "Strange" by JLS. So our group thought it would be a good idea to use some of the things that are done by JLS e.g. costume, cheesy acting, air grabs etc. The video contained a typical boyband image in the way we filmed our video. For instance we showed a lot of close-ups portraying emotion from the singers, which is something you are likely to see in a real media products. This all links in with Goodwin's points and how the lyrics and visuals, music and visuals are typical of our genre, cheesy boyband pop video. The frequent use of close-ups show off each individual artist to show the importance and emotion of the band. Furthermore there is a constant notion of looking at the camera, again to show emotion and to capture the feelings of the singers. It is also done to make it look as though they are actually singing to someone in particular. Our video, advert, and DVD cover all conform to the stereptype by including typical balck and white colour. This can display the mood and give off a good effect.

Q2)

Our media products all work well as a promotional package for a number of reasons. Firstly they all have similar effects e.g. black and white, and the cover and magazine both contain either camera shots from the music video or a still camera shot taken in a location from the video, while wearing the same costumes that are seen in the video. This shows good continuity. It creates the image of a typical boyband in the way we use black and white and longing, emotive looks into space, which is stereotypicallywhat you would in a boyband is stereotypically what you would in a boyband video, DVD cover, and magazine advert. Our products are successfulat attracting the target audeince, which is most likely going to teenage girls or fans of JLS. The reasons it is successful is because it shows off the image of the boyband and constantly shows the artists, which is what the audience want to see. Things such as featuring a gallery on our DVD means that the audience can look at pictures of the band, together and individually.

Q3)

We learnt a lot from the feedback we were given. Firstly from our initial pitch we realised that in order to make our music video a success, we had to go all out and make it as cheest as possible. By doing this we hoped that instead of the video looking embaressing, it would look cheesy, but in a good way, as though it was actually something you would see in real life. From our rough cut we learnt that we would have to improve our video by doing a number of things. Firstly our peers said that we needed to include different locations in our video. With this in mind we decided to film outside, wearing different costumes to make our video look better and more professional. Secondly we were told to use more effects on final cut. So after hearing this we decided to inlude more cross-dissolves, fade in/outs, and include the use of split-screens. We had a lot of compliments for our final cut. For instance many said that we showed good lip-synching, acting and emotive singing. They also said it was good how we looked like a proper boyband, and how we used effects such as black and white, split-screens etc. to make our video successful.

Q4) The use of the new technology helped us massively in making our music video a success. Firstly the HD cameras, and still shot cameras helped us capture fantastic shots with great quality. They aslo helped us in making the lighting look effective in certain shots. Final cut was essential in making our music video look professional and successful. We included a large amount of editing techniques to amke it look better e.g. black and white, fades, cross-dissolves, split-screens etc. Although it took a lot of time to find out how to do some things, in the end, I believe our product looked very professional. The use of photoshop is something our group found harder to do to begin with. However once we knew what we were doing, it became a lot easier. We managed to include good effects such as gradient going from colour to black and white for our DVD cover, as well as making our advert look effective and professionally made.