Ashley Stump's Media Evaluation

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product is mainly conceptual although has an element of narrative.  It does not conform to the typical forms and conventions of the narrative style because although we do not have a fixed storyline there are a number of stories within it. Our media product deviates from established music video forms and conventions in some ways as we wanted it to be different to the typical style of music video that people tend to watch but also did not want to deviate too much to make sure that we were reaching out to the right audience. The genre of our music video is dance/house, although we have not stuck to the typical forms and conventions of a dance music video, as people would expect there to be young people, at a club, drinking, with provocatively dressed women, which diverges from Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze that we studied. The group and I wanted to have more than one storyline throughout the video rather than a continuous storyline so that the audience was kept interested and could relate to the different aspects of the video.

In terms of camera use, our video conforms to conventional codes and conventions as we have stuck to Dyer’s star theory in a way that we have used various close-up shots of the actors in our video as if they would be the main artist if our music video was to be published. In terms of editing, we followed conventional codes and conventions as we used fast paced cuts and creative ways to show our footage such as reversing and a version of split screen where one screen overlaps another screen and shows a different part of the video. We took the lyrics of the song and metaphorically integrated it into our music video to create imagery for the viewer. For example for the lyrics ‘Your love pours down, surrounds me like a waterfall’, we filmed water pouring over Chloe to physically show the lyrics to the viewer. We also used stop motion as a way of presenting the lyrics, for example, the metaphor ‘I wear my heart upon my sleeve’, the group and I used stop motion of two halves of a heart moving up the sleeve, eventually forming a heartbeat. Although literally presenting the lyrics as part of the video seems the obvious thing to do, you do not often see this in music videos and we wanted to deviate aspects of our video from typical expectations of the viewer.

Regarding intertextuality, we used aspects of Rihanna’s video, ‘We found Love’ and Beyoncé’s video. ‘1+1’. From We found love, we liked the fast paced cuts and we thought this would be a good thing to use for our own music video, as we too, have a fast part to the music. Rihanna also had random aspects between the cuts which we liked the look of and developed ideas from for our own music video. From 1+1, we liked the idea of the water trickling down in front of her face as this linked to the lyrics in the song we used, therefore we thought it would be a good idea to develop our video from the idea of water pouring down in front of Beyoncé’s face by having water pouring down around Chloe.

As research into music video's, we were asked to produce various essay's analysing different music videos. We were also asked to produce an essay based on a music video director. In each of the essays, we had to discuss Goodwins theory and how it is presented in music videos. As a result of producing these essays, it gave the group and I and insight into what music videos should consist of. For example; star image motifs, the relationship between music and visuals etc.

Please can you look at my Wix website for question 1
http://www.wix.com/ashleekatestump/ashleysmediaevaluation#!question-1 


Q2- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

In our music video, the group and I developed a number of branding elements. Branding is a name, symbol or image that is commonly known to identify a company or its products and seperate them from competition. Branding is important as it makes the product indentifiable to the intended audience which create a feeling of imvolvement. One branding element that we created was the silhouette figures on the couple Jack and Sarah.  Another branding element that we developed in the music video was the split screen of each of our lips. Both of these elements have been followed through on.

We researched into magazine adverts and various digi-packs in order to get a better understanding of the sort of things that should be included when creating an advert of digi-pack. We were asked to analyse some Digi-packs and a magazine advert in detail which helped us when creating our own because we knew what type of things would be expected by the audience. We also learned that the advert and digi-pack needed to be easily identifiable to the intended audience. As well as analysing adverts and digi-packs, we also produced some rough drafts of our own CD covers and adverts.

First of all we created the digi-pack and in order to make it as realistic as possible, we had to include the traditional forms and conventions of an album cover and digi-pack. These elements include soundtracks on the album, artists name, copyright information, background image as well as a continuous theme throughout. The branding elements of the digi-pack are the stripy background, which is consistant on the album cover and back of the album cover as well as on the magazine advert, and the split screen image of the groups lips. We also used the same font that Calvin Harris uses for his ‘feels so close’ single, Helvetica, which makes the digi-pack more realistic. 

This is the inside to our digi-pack.

This is the outside to our digi-pack.

  

For our magazine advert, we decided that we wanted to stick to the same theme of the digi-pack as well as sticking to the forms and conventions of a magazine advert; title, artists name, release date, reviews, star rating, copyright information etc. As in our digi-pack, we have stuck to the same stripy background for the magazine advert, the silhouette figures and Helvetica font. This makes the magazine advert more easily recognisable and the audience will recognise the artist when seeing the advert. The stripy background makes the advert bold and stand out and the silhouette relates back to our music video.

This is the magazine advert.

These are the stages of making the silhouette pictures for our digi-pack and magazine advert.

Overall, the group and I have tried to stick to the typical forms and conventions of a music video and the advertising that goes with it. We also tried to stick to the same theme throughout to make our advertisements more easily recognisable for the audience.

Please can you see my Question 2 on my wix website.
http://www.wix.com/ashleekatestump/ashleysmediaevaluation#!question-2

Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The target demographic of our music video is both males and females between the ages of 14-21. We took ideas from Rihanna’s video ‘We found love’ and Beyoncé’s video 1+1 as part of our research into our target demographic as the two videos are the same genre as our music video.

We have taken ideas from these two music videos because they all appeal to the same audiences such as young adults as this age group has grown up to this type of music therefore they can recognise the artists. Such audiences would also be interested in our music video as the same audience will easily recognise Calvin Harris, especially clubbers in the age group as they have probably heard some Calvin Harris in some nightclubs.

As part of our research, we looked into various music channels and their viewing figures:
MTV Dance- Daily- 109,000, Weekly- 548,000
MTV Hits- Daily-300,000, Weekly- 1,518, 000
Kiss-Daily- 194,000, Weekly- 929,000
Viva-Daily- 975,000, Weekly- 4,173,000
Smash hits- Daily-161,000, Weekly- 868,000
We also looked into the different types of record labels that would be likely to sell our album; Fly Eye, Columbia, Ministry of Sound, Armada Music and Tiger Records.

We built elements of friendships and relationships into our music video to appeal to our target audience because as a teenager/young adult, friendships and relationships are a big thing at that age and also everyone can appeal to friendships and relationships. We tried to show these in a positive way to make viewers have the feel good factor. The audience is asked to put themselves in the position of either the friendship or relationship that they can relate to. The audience is witnessing the coming together of two different types of relationship and will hopefully impact them in a positive way relating to the types of relationships they have in their own lives.

Comments made by Audience:

1. Club shots last too long, perhaps take them out or shorten them

2. I like the iPad idea and the different background drop you used

3. Add referece to the song. There is too many random ideas

4. Cake fight could be cut down

5. I do not really understand what is going on. There is not one main storyline

6. A split screen would be a good idea to use for the iPad idea.

At this point in our music video, it was clear from the audience feedback that we had a lot to do. Our main priority was to link the video to the music because a lot of the audience were confused as to what was going on as a lot of our video was irrelevant.  We did have a club scene in the video, but it was not very well filmed and the audience did not like it as much as we thought they would as it did lack a bit of relevance although the genre of the song is dance. As well as negative feedback, there was some positive feedback. People liked our iPad idea in some respects and liked the overall idea of the video, they just thought it needed some bits changing which we took as constructive criticism and changed as much as we could to meet their needs and wants.

Regarding the digi-pack, everybody liked the colour scheme idea of the 4 different coloured stripes but really liked the silhouette idea because it was very different to what they expected. They liked the fact that we added elements of our music video to our digi-pack as it is easy recognisable. They liked that we kept the font as Helvetica which is the actual font that Calvin Harris uses for his ‘feels so close’ single. For the magazine advert, the audience feedback revealed that they liked that we stuck to the colour scheme of the digi-pack and the silhouette figures as people would be able to relate to the music video easily.

We decided that we wanted our background to be multi coloured in order for the silhouette figures to stand out. To create the muliti-coloured effect I opened a blank document on photoshop, used the rectangular marquee tool and selected a square block on the black sheet.

Once this was done, I selected 2 colours using the colour picker, one lighter than the other one, and then used the gradient tool to have the top darker than the bottom. This effect will make the silhouette figures at the bottom stand out more than it would if the background was one block of colour. 

I repeated this 3 times for all the different colours.

Then I started to add text, but we changed it last minute to white text, Helvetica font. 

Audience feedback from our target demographic has helped greatly towards the making of our video. The comments we received from our target demographic let us know what we were lacking in our video as well as what should be kept. To identify our target demographic, we looked into the types of people who listen to our genre of music and their expectations of what should be included in a dance/house genre.

I think our end products are successful and stands up against professional products as they are eye catching, well recognisable, well edited and believable. I think the video conforms to genre codes and conventions throughout. We used a variety of shot sizes and paid close attention to mise-en-scene. Our digi-pack and magazine advert both look realistic. This was achieved by showing understanding of conventions of conventions of layout and page design, accurate use of language and register, appropriately integrating illustration and text and so on. We all worked equally within the group and helped each other when needed which was a big help in making the end products successful. 

The music video is a must-see-again video, I think, because there are a lot of different elements in the video the viewer may want to watch over and over again to consume all the different elements. I think our music video would be promoted by a major record label as Calvin Harris is a well known artist. Our music video’s unique selling point would be the silhouette figures , the four different coloured lips and the stripy background as it is on both the digi pack and the magazine advert. I think this could provide some opportunities for spin-off merchandising such as personalised t-shirts, mugs, wall posters, key rings etc. 


Please can you see my Question 3 on my Wix website.
http://www.wix.com/ashleekatestump/ashleysmediaevaluation#!question-3


Q4- How did you use new media technologies in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages?

Whilst creating all of our media products, there was a range of technologies that we used in order to help us do this in an effective and professional way.

Research was a huge part of our coursework and technologies such as Web 2.0 helped us greatly. Using Web 2.0, we were able to use Google and YouTube to help with researching other music videos, Calvin Harris, genre etc. The Mac computers helped a lot in the production of our various products as its big screen and ability to adjust contrast and colour made it easier for us to see what we was going in a way that suited us. We also used Blogger to present the work we had done as well as to show progress.

For filming our music video, we used a Sanyo HD camera. As the camera was HD, it made the overall quality of the footage better which meant that the finished product looked more professional. Last year, we used a different camera, so we had to take some time to learn how to use the new ones. We learned that we had to make sure the white balance was correct before filming. To do this we simply zooming into a white piece of paper/ white object and clicking correct. Compared to last years cameras they are much better quality and more reliable to use. The only problem we faced with the camera was lighting. For part of our music video, we had to film balloons being set off into the sky, but because the sky was too bright, the camera did not pick up the floating balloons as well as it should. We tried different settings but nothing seemed to work. We waited till the sky got a bit darker and filmed again and the camera managed to pick up the balloons more clearly.  We also used a tripod during filming to help keep the camera still. The tripod was also useful for panning, tilting and changing height which helped to make the video seem more professional. Lighting was a big problem in our video which meant that we had to compromise with some parts of our video. We wanted to have a club scene in the video, but due to poor lighting this was not possible. We then had to take that idea out and replace it with something better.

When creating our digi-pack and magazine advert, we used a Nikon D40 still camera to take pictures in order to eventually create a silhouette figures and also for the stop motion we use in the video. The Nikon D40 allowed us to produce high quality pictures to help make our advert and digi-pack seem more proficient and realistic. We also used a green-screen to help create the silhouette effect. The green screen helped when coming to edit the pictures as it was easy to take out the background. We also used the green screen for stop motion in our video.  We took various pictures of Freya in front of the green screen with paper hearts moving up her arms, reflecting lyrics in the song, and edited the green screen on Final Cut to have a flashing background of various colours.

When coming to edit the pictures, we used Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Photoshop. As I have used both editing suites before, I knew how to use them well which meant I did not need to waste time learning how to use the software. The only technical challenge I faced was creating the silhouette effect. So I took an image and took time going through the tools on Photoshop and figured out how to create the effect. Once I knew how to do this, I applied what I had learned to the picture we took to use for our digi-pack and magazine advert.

                                              (Example of editing on Photoshop)

For the editing of our video, we used Final Cut Express. I had not used Final cut before this project as last year, I used IMovie. I took some time out to learn how to use the editing software. The class was given a ‘Pink Panther’ task to do which meant that I got a chance to use the software and learn the basics.  The only problem we faced with Final Cut was when we placed new footage into the software, the whole video would move about meaning that we had to move it back again.  We also used garage band briefly to cut down the length of our song. We had used Garage band before so it did not take us long and we did not face any difficulties

Overall, all the technologies listed have been a huge help for my group and I in our project and has helped us to create products at a professional standard in order to make the products believable.


Please can you see my Question 4 on my Wix website
http://www.wix.com/ashleekatestump/ashleysmediaevaluation#!question-4