Media evaluation

Media Evaluation

Joely Parsons

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

At the beginning of the process of making the music video we researched into codes and conventions for our genre of music, which is pop rock. I also looked at Andrew Goodwin theory, which has six main points; we looked at these and to follow by them to make a successful music video. Other than the Goodwin theory there are also conventions such as mise-en-scene, cinematography, and editing. The group and myself came to a decision that we wanted to change it to a document style music video which is known as a narrative performance as well as making an image for the band (Dragonfly) so the audience could pick it up from the video. Before making the video I researched into other girl bands that used a similar genre of music I found that each band whether it is a girl/boy band or mixed they always produce a fan-based video that is what I think our music video is similar too. I think this because we have added home shot footage, which shows ourselves from a natural point of view and behind the scenes of us writing the songs.

The research of Goodwin theory was useful and helpful along the process of recording our music video; the points from Goodwin’s theory we have used are a genre characteristic that involves showing live performances, as our genre of music is pop rock. We have achieved this in our music video as we included the band performing on stage with drum kit, guitar, bass and microphones. The group set it up as if it was a real gig and we are performing to people (fans), this was a successful part of the video as we managed to get the equipment it helped make it look believable. As we added performance into our music video this is linked with a relationship between the lyrics and visuals, which is another point of Goodwin’s theory. We have done this by lip syncing that is used commonly in all music videos, I know this as I did research into other videos mostly girl bands as Dragonfly are one. Another of Goodwin’s theory is often due to the demands of the record label; we did feature in the music video the band Dragonfly as we chose to do performance and documentary style.

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

In the process of creating my digipack I looked at existing ones that are similar to the genre of music that we have chosen. Within the group we chose that having a scarf would be our signature look whether it would be in our hair, round our neck, tied round the microphone etc. I wanted to keep this look happening throughout the digipack and the posters that I created, this is so our target audience and the public who didn’t know who we were as a band Dragonfly. They would realize from wearing the scarf, as it is our signature look. I have used a different image on each panel, I chose to do this, as I wanted to include images from what looks like behind the scenes. If you look at my digipack the bottom three pictures, which include the front, and back of the digipack, also the first image you see when you open up the digipack flap. For the front cover I have used an image of me, Charlotte and Megan (the band Dragonfly), I chose it because I liked the image and what the setting looked like behind. I used Adobe Photoshop CS6 to edit all the pictures, but mainly for the front cover as that will be the first image everyone sees. I put our band name and the name of the album on the front cover also as this is the main information the audience needs to know if they were to buy it. I didn’t want an image for the back cover where it would be too much as I would be adding typography because I would be including the name of our singles, my record labels logo and bar code. I have kept the images throughout the digipack similar, because I wanted the location to be the same and suit the bands image.

Question Continued…

The posters that have been created are two images taken from my digipack; I have used the image, which will be on the back that is of the scarfs tied to the tree as it is for a poster which will be put around places I didn’t want anything too out there. I like it that it is simple but show our look of band in it, as well as including the main details a poster should need and what you need to know to get the album. Such as name of the band, name of the album, when the release date of the album is, album cover, bands logo, record label logo and lastly I put the iTunes logo on it this is so people know that it is available on iTunes. All the little details and typography are the same for the other poster just the picture, the next image I used was including the band members (Joely, Megan and Charlotte) but you couldn’t see our faces. We are walking in the image, but the background of the photo works nicely I have edited it that the sun is brighter which brings a nice glow in the corner of the poster. I edited the posters on Adobe Photoshop CS6 also as it is stalled on the Macs and I could mess around with the saturation, brightness and other tools.

What have you learned from the audience feedback?

The group had two different ways of getting feedback for our music video, firstly by screening it to the class and teachers and secondly putting the finished video on Facebook. For the screening we got given back feedback sheets these were helpful as they told us positives and negatives to what we could change editing or filming of our music video. We chose to use a social network way, which is Facebook, reason because of this is our target audience is ages 15-25. The age range of the target audience will all be mostly on Facebook because between the group and myself we have a variety of friends, all different ages that are linked with the target audience. People did like the video and also comment, the main comments were they loved it, which is lovely to hear, but the kind of feedback to have seen is the positives and negatives of the music video.  We got one comment like this and it was from Jack Coribel stating  ‘ really well edited, especially the moment of colour contrast from black and white to coloured, however the lack of lip synching on the verses make it seem more like a movie montage’. As it is a music video we don’t want it too like a movie montage, the aim of our video was it is documentary style with performance as well but he gave his opinion, which was the whole point of putting it on Facebook.

Question Continued…

From showing our music video the class and teacher we got given back two feedback sheets which helped us out to what we could add or change to make it better as well as take anything out.  A couple of the positives were the pace of the editing was good; we had a good performance and image of the band, the documentary shots in the video worked and looked really good and cinematography worked successfully. Some negatives were to tidy up the cuts that need to be done and a couple of the shots were too long and needed to be cut down. We looked at the feedback sheets and done any tweaking that needed to be done to make it better. Receiving audience feedback is useful and coming to a realization it helps a lot as it helps improve making what you are creating better and a well done finished product.

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

The main media technology I used within the research and planning of the music video is my blog. I created my blog at the beginning of the process when we started looking into Andrew Goodwin’s theory and looking at other music videos as well as deciding what song we were going to do. All of this is information has been put onto my blog as it was the way of showing you the progression of the music video, also if we have made any changes, research also the posters and digi pack that I created.  Another technology used was YouTube towards myself and the group looking at other music videos with the same music genre, also to see what girl bands offer in there videos to see if we could include any of these things.

When it came to filming we used two different cameras the main one being a Sony HXR Broadcasting camera, which we used for our performance shots. It was a nice camera to work with and the outcome was high definition quality that helped being used on a dolly device. The other camera used was a Canon 500D video recording device; a tripod was used so the filming was still. The outcome of using this camera was good but I would always recommend using the broadcasting camera.