Evaluation

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

We decided to do the Arctic monkeys song 'Mardy bum' for our music video. Arctic monkeys are a typically conventional indie band so we aimed to conform with that image in our production and therefore use the same conventions, although challenging them in some aspects of it. The band we used in our video dressed in typically 'indie' clothes such as shirts and jeans and played instruments such as guitars and drums in order to fit in with the conventions of arctic monkeys and their genre. The lead character in our video was also dressed in a similar way, in order to carry on conforming to the typical conventions of indie music. Arctic monkeys also like to portray themselves as 'working class' and often set their videos in domestic settings. We aimed to follow this particular convention by shooting the band scenes in the basement of a working class house and shooting the narrative on a normal road and in a normal house. Also we decided to have a band playing as well as a narrative it fit in with the conventions of a normal music video. However, we also tried to challenge some conventions you see in music videos. To elaborate, the song is about love and a relationship, but instead of using the typical boy-girl scenario which is very frequent in video’s, we decided to do a an original twist by having the boy having love for his teddy bear. Despite some challenges, we feel we managed to pull it off and make it believable by telling the story through our lead character. We feel by challenging these conventions we have managed to produce a unique take on an indie music video and we feel it has made our video more recognisable and stand out from other videos of a similar genre. 

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

We have tried to maintain a clear image throughout the making of our music video, C.D digipak and website. We did this so that the audience viewing it would be able to see the image of our band and immediately recognise it. The video, website and C.D digipak are all interrelated as we used similar colours and fonts throughout. Also, we have used the same teddy bear that we used in the video on the C.D and it also makes an appearance on the website. This means that the audience will recognise the bear instantly from the music video. The purpose of the website and CD digipak is to promote the band and the video. The website specifically promotes the band’s upcoming gigs, makes the viewer aware of the music video and also allows you to purchase songs that are available. The C.D cover features the same character and teddy bear as in the music video on the front, and the band we used in the music video appear on the back. We feel the front image is a strong indication of our video and also fits into the genre of indie. This means that not only is the music video relevant to the song, but it also helps sell the C.D as the cover is a reference to the video. For the inside sleeve we carried on the theme of the teddy bear and again used the same font which helped us achieve a consistent house style. Overall, we feel all these aspects effectively appeal to an indie audience around the ages of 16-25.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We gathered feedback for our production by sharing our music video to a variety of audiences. These included our fellow classmates, other students around college as well as our family and friends to gather a range of varied opinions on our production. We did this half way through our production in order to gain feedback on how to improve our video before we completed the production. This helped as it gave us the opportunity to alter certain aspects in which weren’t as strong; an example is a certain bit of editing in which we changed due to constructive criticism regarding it. We did this again at the end of our finished production to gain some final feedback in which we could use if we were to do a similar project in the future. We generally agreed with the constructive feedback we received and feel this helped towards making our project stronger however there was a minority of feedback which was only negative and didn’t provide any constructive comments on how we could improve but this was the only slight problem which occurred when we were receiving feedback. Another good factor to this process is the fact different people have different opinions so we received a mass of different comments which gave us plenty to think about in terms of enhancing our ideas and overall project. The main thing we learned from our audience feedback was that opinions other than your own are vital towards creating a stronger more appealing production.

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

We used a range of technologies in all the stages of our production. Our research and planning was mainly internet based, we used music playing sites such as YouTube and MySpace to regularly to browse through and listen to songs videos to gain ideas and inspiration and to specifically analyse our genre once we had chosen it. We have also used YouTube to upload our finished production to gain even more audience feedback. For the construction and production of our video we used the software iMovie which enabled us to import and edit our footage on a timeline to our chosen song and add any desired effects if necessary. We also used iWeb to construct our website. This particular software allowed us to incorporate our own images and project them in a layout we seemed suitable and effective. Photoshop was also a vital piece of software as we used this program to design our CD digipak. It allowed us to import and edit/ cut out certain sections of our images and enabled us to add effects and edit image colours whenever appropriate an example being our final website layout. Throughout all the stages of our project we kept an interactive blog on the internet in which we added posts contrasting from images and screen shots to videos and worksheets. We enjoyed using more technology than our first year project as it gave us the chance to use a range of interactive services to produce our production.