Friday 6 May 2011

Examples of ancillary tasks

Evaluation 2!

Evaluation

Evaluation

I just made a new Voki. See it here:





This is a link from the website 'voki.com' i created this animation as an example of our target audience to be an example of the feedback we had from our final music video. It explains what people thought of our final in a short sentence and in a more interesting way.

Tuesday 3 May 2011

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

Throughout our media project we have had to use many media technologies. Firstly during the planning stage in order to produce an affective media video that involved key conventions that would appeal to the target audience and make the genre clear, we had to research existing music videos and to do this we used the Internet with sites that allowed us to watch videos such as 'youtube'. We also researched information about the band on the search engine 'google'. This was extremely useful as we could see and analyse the clear conventions that are typically found in pop music videos and the image that 'The Saturdays' and other girl bands have wanted to put across.

We have also had to use the editing software and photoshop during the construction stages of the project. Photoshop allowed us to improve the layout of the images we have taken by changing the brightness, colours, size and position etc. We could also add in the text and change the font and style in order for it to follow the conventions of existing CD albums and advertisement posters. The editing software allowed us to add effects to the video such as; slow motion. It also allowed us to improve the continuity and create smooth transitions when cutting from shot to shot.

Social networking sites and also youtube have also been very useful during the evaluation stage as it allowed us to gain audience feedback so that we could ensure that any areas that could be stringer were improved. As this allowed us to share our videos and images with people and they would give us there ideas and opinions of what could be developed in order to make it more appealing.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout our project we have gained a large amount of audience feedback mainly from creating a group on the social networking site Facebook. This allowed people to give us comments and feedback on videos and images of our work that we had posted on there. This was very useful as it ensured that we could improve and develop any areas that weren't as strong as they could of been for example; people commented that they think it could be improved we more shots being filmed outside in our video instead of too many shots of the plain white background to give it more variety. So we could then make sure that we have a wider range of shots and more outside this gave the video more appeal and was more interesting to watch.

We also posted our video on youtube as this allowed a wider range of people to see it and gain more feedback. We learnt that we needed to include more of our narrative shots as people felt that this made the video more exciting and gave it a story where as too many performance shots can become boring, so we took this on bored and developed the video.

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

The combination of my groups main product and our ancillary tasks have been very affective, as firstly with our CD cover we decided to have each of us using a chair in a certain to pose with and have us wearing bright coloured tops with an individual colour each. This is similar to 'The Saturdays' as they have been recognised in their videos and CD albums to each be wearing a certain colour to represent them. We feel this layout looked very effective and fit in with the typical conventions of a pop CD cover as it stood out with bright and feminine colours, and we represented a positive image of a girl band. We also created a booklet for the CD with images of each of our band inside and the lyrics of which part of the song we each sing next to the picture. This looked affective as we had each photo taken in the same location but in very different poses and uses different objects around us which made the images more interesting.

The advertisement poster that we created was also very affective as we decided that because the name of the song is 'Work' we wanted to represent this by dressing up as different well known job occupations, for example; policeman. This made the poster look very appealing as it relates to the name of the song and the range of bright colours and exaggerated poses allowed it to stand out. This also helped to represent the image that we pout across in our music video of 'girl power' as it showed the band in a dominant position and gave them authority.

Finally our main music video was video effective as it included many element of typical conventions seen in existing videos of the pop genre. We also challenged certain conventions to make it more appeal and target a wider audience. We used a variety of locations similar to what you would find in this sort of video, and used an interesting amount of different shots to increase interest. We have also included many special effects when editing the video such as; slow motion. This again made the video look more effective and professional as it is more entertaining for the audience to watch. We have also included narrative shots in our video which is a typical convention of pop videos, this again makes the video more entertaining as you have a story to watch as well as the performance shots.

Wednesday 27 April 2011

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

For our media product we decided to produce a music video similar to the girl band 'The Saturdays' using the song 'Work'. So in order to ensure that our video included some of the main conventions of a typical 'pop' genre music video, we had to research these conventions by watching videos of bands such as; Girls Aloud, Spice Girls and The Saturdays on youtube.

From watching these various videos there are certain conventions we have decided to follow, firstly the outfits that we are wearing in our video are very feminine and slightly revealing which is very common for girl bands and they want to have sex appeal in order to attract a wider audience.



We have also followed the typical convention that girl bands try to represent in their videos which is the idea of 'Girl Power'. In order to put this image across we have include narrative shots in our video that make the girls appear more dominant and in control than the boy as they are taunting and teasing him.

Another convention that is found in many girl bands pop videos is a dance routine being performed. We also decided to include this in our video as we felt it makes the video more appealing and entertaining to watch for the audience, and decided to layout out our dance routine in a similar formation to 'The Saturdays' as it looks very effective.




The locations we have used in our video are also very conventional as we have performed the dance routine shots in the dance studio and in an open space both indoors, the single shots are all on a plan white backdrop, we have also used a shot that is on some steps outdoors similarly to in the original 'Work' video.

There are also certain conventions that would typically be found in pop music that we have decided to challenge. For example in 'The Saturdays' video 'Work' they have not included any single shots of someone doing the dance routine on there own, where as we have as we felt it adds more interesting and makes our video different. The outfits are also always very feminine and prerogative and we have usually followed this conventions but also decided to add more of a rock look to our video with some of the outfits we have chosen.