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

When approaching the project as a group we decided we wanted to follow the conventions of existing media products in both our ancillary tasks and main task. From researching existing rock music videos early on in the project as well as looking specifically at the official Paramore video for the song Misery Business, we were able to conform to the convention of quick shots in a fast tempo song. The narrative shots in the official Paramore video were vaguely longer than the band shots, we chose to convert the conventions of this by making both the band shots and the narrative shots no more than a few seconds long.

When approaching my ancillary tasks I wanted to also generally conform to the codes and conventions of existing media products. I looked at various examples including an advert for the new Killer's album, where the album was the main focus; I also looked at examples where the advert was split between both tour advert and new album promotion. Seeing both these ways to produce an advert for a new album made me want to make the most of my advertisement and combine the advert between tour and album but making sure the album was the main focus. When looking to produce my digipak, I researched several existing products and analysed them to develop my knowledge on the codes and conventions as I had never created a product like this before. I looked into great depth of detail when researching and applied conventions to my own work, from the band thanks on the back page of the insert book to how the production titles were written on the DVD disc itself.

I tried to follow the codes and conventions when creating each product as best as possible and apply Negus' genre theory across media platforms to ensure that my target audience would not reject my product.

Evaluation: How did you use new technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

I used new technologies in the research for our music video for Paramore – Misery Business, Google was the first source of new technology I used, after deciding as a group we wanted to produce a music video we went onto the Internet to research different genres and the songs we could pick. After collecting song ideas we then scanned YouTube to see what kind of videos had been produced for each song as well as familiarizing ourselves with the song again. When we had chosen our song, I used Adobe Photoshop to experiment with potential band logos that would represent our brand of Paramore, as well as using Google to research previous band logos to find out what was conventional of a rock logo.  New technology was also useful when researching elements such as mise en scene of the rock genre, enabling me and the rest of the group to develop a deep knowledge of the costume and location we would need to produce this video.


New technology was a key element when researching for my ancillary tasks, it enabled me to use the Internet to research the codes and conventions for both rock as a genre and of a tour digipak and magazine advertisement. I studied and analyzed tour posters by Green Day and Dragon Force as well as adverts for new albums from Pulled Apart By Horses and The Killers, looking at existing products helped me collect ideas of how I did and did not want my finished products to look.


The planning of my music video used new technology such as simple Microsoft Word documents to construct elements such as our production schedule. We also used a lot of YouTube to take details such as shot time from music videos, when looking at the official Paramore – Misery Business music video the shots were not longer than 2 seconds long because it is a very fast paced song.  We also made various video blogs of the examples of shots we planned to incorporate within the video as well as presenting our pitch of music video to our teachers and explaining what we had achieved so far. I also used new technologies when planning my ancillary tasks, I was able to hand draw my drafts in detail making notes and analyzing them before scanning them onto the computer through Adobe Photoshop.


New technologies were used the most during the development of our music video; I used a film camera as well as various other camera equipment such as the tracking system, jib, steadicam, dolly and tripod. I used Premier Pro to edit the footage that we filmed in the drama studio, this new technology enabled us to make a draft video to upload to YouTube for feedback. Facebook and Skype were used in the development of our music video, this enabled us to have group discussions and communicate when we were outside of school. Video blogs were also used in the process of my development for the video, showing behind the scenes of our filming as well as video rushes of the footage we captured. The development of my ancillary tasks involved new technologies, I used Adobe Photoshop to develop my first drafts of my ancillary tasks, I edited my photographs enabling me to transform them into products through Adobe Indesign.


New technology played an important part in evaluating my work for both ancillary and video, we as a group made video blogs talking to our peers about our work, giving us feedback and their opinions on what we had produced. We had a creative arts evening at school where we recorded some of those who attended on their opinions to help us critique our work where necessary.

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

I mirrored the mise en scene of our music video Misery Business through to my ancillary tasks of the tour digipak and the magazine advert for a new album, I achieved this by carrying element of the music video through to my ancillary tasks such as the burning photos in the video and the old scraps of paper I used in my ancillaries. I felt using similar elements like this and carrying them through video and print helped make a strong connection between both pieces of work. I feel the I have used synergy in my work, being able to bring similar elements from my print work through to my video work allowing them to be identified in the same group of media products.

Evaluation: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Through audience feedback on both my ancillary tasks and the music video I have learnt how to self critique my work, by seeing similar flaws in my work that others may have mentioned through their feedback. I have realized although I am able to spot faults in my work I need another pair of unbiased eyes to give me their opinion on my work and maybe some suggestions to how they would have approached the project themselves. The verity of my audience feedback has allowed me to enhance my knowledge of what people expect from a rock tour digipak and album advertisement as well as a rock music video. I collected feedback from audiences that our Paramore products are aimed at, as well as from parents and teachers who can give feedback from a technical point of view and students within our school to give their opinion even if its not their preferred genre.


Through the use of new technology to get audience feedback, using Twitter and Facebook we were able to get quick direct feedback on our finish product, uploading our video to YouTube also allowed us to get feedback from unrelated sources.


Twitter

 

Facebook

 

YouTube

 

Finished ancillary tasks - Digipak

Front, back and spine of the Digipak 

Inside of the Digipak

Disc from Digipak

Insert from the Digipak

Finished ancillary tasks - Magazine advertisement

Final edit of our music video

Feedback from creative arts evening

Below is a video of the feedback we got on both our music video and individual ancillary tasks from the creative arts evening at our school which showcased the work of Year 10 and 11 students as well as sixth form. 

Audience feed back on our music video

Audience Feedback Sheets

I have summarised some of the some of the comments received from our feedback sheets that were completed by Year 10 and Year 11 media students at our school. The questions they were asked are issues below:

Was the constructed mise-en-scene effective?

Was the target audience catered for?

Did you enjoy it?

We also asked them to write down their age and gender

Gender / Age

Male / 16
+ Splitscreen
+ Similar to a real music video
– Unclear narrative at times
+ Appeals to teenagers of either gender

Male / 16
+ Narrative is open – the stalker could be an alter ego?
+ Understood narrative

Female / 16
+ Good song choice

Male / 15
- Too many burning photos

Male / 15
+ Abstract narrative
+ Good lip-synching

Female / 16
+ Appeals to target audience (teens); I enjoyed it

Male / 15
+ Good lip-synching
- ‘Headbanging’ is ‘cringey’
+ Feels like an original music video

Male / 15
+ Good lighting
+ Good setting

Female / 15
- Too horrifying for kids
+ Good mise-en-scene

Male / 16
+ Crossfade worked well with story

Male / 16
+ Lighting and flashing images were effective

Female / 15
+ Paint on wall is good
+ Characters and costume suit song
+ Words in song relate to shots
- Some scenes could be longer

Creative arts evening

We had a creative arts evening at school which showcased the work of most of the sixth form and year 10 and 11 students work. The evening consisted of Drama and Dance pieces, displays of Photography, Fine Art, Graphics and some print work from Media. There was also showings of each music video or film trailer our sixth form has produced, this was the first time our work had be presented. From this evening we gained feedback from the audience on our work both print and film, this enabled us to get an unbiased opinion and critique our work where necessary.

Ancillary tasks further development Digipak

This is the development process of one of my ancillary tasks, a digipak for a tour DVD. These are three pages from the insert book that I am in the process of producing, I have shown my teachers and peers and they have given me some feedback and how they think i should approach finishing these pages. The red circled areas below are dead space, the feedback I got suggested it could be an idea to add elements to this page to make it more edgy and fit the mise en scene I am trying to grasp for this project. They suggested either to add empty chocolate wrappers of coffee stains to my work to make the pages rougher and less kept. 

I tried this idea out using Photoshop and played around with the positioning of certain objects such as badges, chocolate wrappers, tea and coffee stains and crumbs but i was not happy with the way it looked, the outcome was not as successful as I had hoped so I decided not to add any of these extras to my pages.

  

I then went back and looked at the pages and thought about what other things I could do to them to complete them and make them look more finished, I marked in red where i could fit more images onto the page, making it feel more used and messy rather than only three images spread across the page. I still was not completely satisfied with the way my pages looked so decided to put two sets on lyrics onto a page instead of one, I adjusted the font size and adapted the positioning of the existing text to make room. 

I wanted to leave more or less a whole page for the band thanks as when I had researched tour digipak's the band thanks was a big part of what the digipak was about and most of the ones I looked at particularly Beyonce's, the DVD was all about the fans. Here is the partially constructed band thanks page for my booklet after getting feedback from my peers the majority thought it would be beneficial to make the font bigger on the actual thanks and to add some more band images onto the page to complete it. 

I wanted a main image of all of the band for the front cover for my DVD but i had a lot of dead space at the bottom of the page, so i decided to create three smaller polaroid's in Photoshop of each band member and place them in the dead space at the bottom. I referred back to my research when placing the polaroids putting the vocalist in the middle with drums and guitar either side. I placed text 'RIOT! TOUR'12' as if it has been written along the bottom of the main polaroid so the audience were aware of what the DVD was about. After I placed the bands logo onto the photo of the polaroid so most importantly people were aware who the digipak was about. 

I knew my front cover wasn't complete so I started to add greater detail to it, mirroring the inside pages of the insert book I places tap I had edited in Photoshop over the polaroids so they would appear stuck on. I also added more text where needed such as on top of the tap on the main polaroid I placed text stating exactly where the tour took place and on the smaller polaroids below I stated the name of each band member.

Ancillary tasks further development Magazine advert

Below we have the first attempt of my magazine advert after we changed the people appearing as the band Paramore, I have chosen to use the bands signature colours (mustard yellow and light grey) that we chose when developing our style guide. I have used a clear main image of the band, showing each member, taking my research into consideration and putting the vocalist in the middle. I have edited the image black and white with a white boarder to mirror the style of the images used in my first drafts of the digipak front and back cover. I have clearly displayed the band logo to complete the main photograph. The advert is to promote a new album, I have used an image of the new album 'RIOT!', using bold and clear text to show its a new album, and small print below for information on purchasing the album. The last section displays details of the 'RIOT! TOUR' the tour that will promote the new album, showing dates, locations and contact information for each venue, including below small print of where tickets can be purchased.

After carefully looking at this product although pleased with the results it did not match the digipak's mise en scene, the products were very different and did not relate to each other, other than both promoting the band Paramore. I wanted to bring the edge that I had when deciding to use polaroids in my digipak, still wanting to include all three sections I had in the previous design, I keep the content the same but develop the layout. I started by using the image of old paper to add to my background which I had used in the back cover of my digipak. I then found another image I liked as much as the one previously used but edited back to colour as I thought the black a white images lacked depth and interest, after transforming these images I used Photoshop to make the images polaroids and added tap to the photographs to complete them.

Ancillary development - Polaroids

Here are some photographs I have edited using Photoshop for my ancillary tasks, I will use these images in both my magzine advert and my digipak. I have made these images black and white and then added a noise to my photographs to help them fit the mise en scene of my project, adding a rough edge to the photos. I then got an image of a polaroid and editing it onto my images to give them a vintage feel and make my work look more unkept.