Evaluation

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

The conventions of music videos are things you expect to see in a music video for example, dancing, lip synching, different locations, a clear story ect. We used lip synching in our music video and devloped this throughtout our filming, however we did not use lip synching in every scene of our music video. All of the four girls who starred in our music video had a chance to lip synch in some part of our music video, and this made it more effective rather than just one person doing all of the lip synching. I think this would have been too hard to achieve all of the scenes in lip synching, so we thereofore done dnace scenes instead of lip synching for some of our scenes. The dance scene was choreographed by Alma, one of the dancers in our music video, and we kept the same routine throughout the whole of our music video. The dancing is also a convention of music videos and we included a dance scene in our music video to improve it and make it look more fun and energetic.

This picture shows the four girls at the grafitti park, where the dance scenes were filmed. We used the same dance routine throughout the whole music video however changed the clothes the girls wore, this was to use a variety of different colours and to cut different parts from different scenes and mix them together when editing our music video.

We also used different locations in our music video, which again is another convention of real music videos. Our music video was located in: London, Madam Tussauds, Grafitti park, and a Jacuzzi. We filmed in these different places to have a change in location so our whole music video was not all filmed and located in the same place, and this made it more fun to watch. We didn't wan our music video to be filmed it the same location throughout the whole of our song, this is why we decided a number of different locations to film for our music video. It was more fun to watch in a number of different places and it showed that we had put thought into where would be suitable locations to film.

The first location we used was the grafitti park. We wanted to make our music video look abit different to normal music video's so we used this grafitti park to show that the girls are still young, and free. The dance scenes were all filmed at the grafitti park, but we used a change in costume for each different dance scene. The grafitti park added colour to our music video and made it look vibrant.

The second location we filmed at was Madame Tussauds. This location made our music video look very glamerous because we used the paparazzi stand and there were loads of flashing lights, so the four girls look like celebrities. The lyrics of the song said "pose, for the camera" therefore the paparazzi stlye location and the flashing lights were like a photo was being taken, and this matched our song theme.

Our third location was London, we filmed at Trafalgar Square and the London Eye. This set a high class life style profile to the four girls and set the glamerous theme to our music video. It showed the girls are still young, yet going out and having fun. It also shoiwed them living celebrity-like life styles.

Our fourth and final location was the jacuzzi scene. We had to make sure we thought about this scene and wether or not it would be appropriate for our music video. We didnt wan't to come across as too "sexy" in our music video because our target audience is young teenagers, so we didn't want to offend our audience. However this scene worked really well, the words matched the visual picture and this scene continued to add colour and glamour to our music video, as the jacuzzi had changing lights.

Our music video also developed conventions of music video's because we used special effects and transitions when we edited. One special effect we had was at the very beginning of our music video, where we had each dancer lip synching their name for the music video (Caramel, Cinnamon, Coco, Honey) we had stars going across the screen. This was unrealistic however added effect to our music video as it made it look more glamours and classy, which is the effect we were trying to achieve.

We also challenged the conventions of music video's we never had different sexes, we used only four girls for our music video's and there was no males at all used throughout our music video. Our music video agreed with Laura Mulvey's theory on feminism. We done this to show We also never used any unrealistic effects such as added in rain or snow, this is because this would not fit in with the theme of our music video, because our music video was colourful and bright but if we used effects such as rain or snow this would have changed the view and made our music video look more dull and depressing. Most music video's also follow a story, however ours never followed a clear story structure. Our music video just showed four girls out having fun and looking glamerous, so there was no story line. Therefore this is another way we challenged conventions of music video's.

2). How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts (DVD digipack, Magazine advert)?

Our main product and the ancillary, being the DVD digipack and the magazine article were very effective when analysing the combination of them together. Our music video matches the digipack and the magazine article. Our music video is colourful, glamerous, and the four girls are portrayed as "celebrities" and we followed this pattern with our magazine article and our DVD digipack. The detail of our ancillary text shows how much thought we put into creating them in order for the colours to match our pictures as well as our music video. We used Photoshop to help us design a professional looking magazine article and digipack. We kept to the glamerous, colourful theme and ten out of ten people said they agreed that the magazine advert matched the actual music video. We kept the theme of our music video consistant when making the digipack and the magazine advert, and by using photoshope this helped our final ancillary text look prfessional.

This is the process of making our DVD digipack:

This screen shot shows the pracess og using photoshop in order to make and finish part of our digipack. You can see how we have taken time to consider in great detail the colours to use, and the format of how we want it to look.

This is the first magazine article we produced:

It has been stuck into an actual magazine, in order for us to get feedback on what it looks like and wether or not it is eye catching enough. After gathering the feedback, and discussing it with the rest of my group we thought we could still improve on this magazine advert, therefore we produced another one:

This is the finished product of our digipack: All in all I think the digipack and the magaine article look very colourful, and eye catching and this matches the vibrant theme of our music video product.

3). What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our audience feedback taught us alot about the standard and success of our music video. We were able to see what worked well, and what didn't work so well in our music video. We made a questionnaire to hand out to individuals that watched our music video in order to gain their opinions about what looked good in our music video, what they enjoyed about our music video and also their opinions on our final finsihed digispack and magazine advert. We thought this helped us because it showed us that our planning was successful and our planning was efficient. By getting other indiviuals to watch our music video and give us feedback this prevented our feedback from being biased. After analysing our questionnaires from the audience that watched our music video, we could see that our music video was successful and the viewers enjoyed watching our music video. The feedback suggests our music video was entertaining, enjoyeable to watch, eye-catching because of the amount of colour we used and lively and vibrant. These were all the wualities we wanted to achieve in our music video, therefore it was good for us to know that people enjoyed watching our music video and that our planning went to plan and our idea's worked well and how we wanted them to.

Here is an example of a questionnaire that one indivdual done for us:

We also produced an online survey for people to take part in after watching our music video. We used the internet to make this service on a website called http://www.surveymonkey.com/, the hyperlink to our survey is http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FZRF7PG. This is a screenshot of our online survey in order to gain more audience feedback:

Here are some results from the people who took part in this survey and completed it for us:

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

There were many different media technologies in order to construct our researxh for our music video and the planning and evealuation stages. Firstly we took digital photos throughout the filming for our music video, and we also used print screen to "grab" certain screenshots of our editing. This was easier to evaluate because I was able to illustrate through pictures the process of my filming and editing of our music video. We also used the internet to research ideas for our music videos and we found inspirations from The Saturdays, Pussycat Dolls and Girls Aloud from the internet which helped us with ideas for our own music video.

These are the pictures of the comparison from our music video and read media texts:

We also done a lot of networking when planning our music video ideas and also when we started filming for our music video. For example my group and I had to research a lot before filming in Madame Tussauds. We emailed the manager in order to get permission to be able to film on their premises. Therefore the use of email is another form of new technologies we used which heloed with our evaluation stages. This is the email sent to the manager and the replies we recieved:




Furthermore, we also used Photoshop along with digital cameras in order to make our magazine advert and digipack. Neither me or any members of my group had used photoshop previously, therefore it was hard for us to adjust to at first. However after getting used to the way it works we managed to create a glamerous style magazine advert and digipack. The use of photoshop made pur magazine advert and digipack look alot more professional by the use of special effects.
The internet was another media technology we used. We used the internet in order to gain information about 4flava- the artist of our song, and also research into real media texts in order for inspirations for our own music video. We also used the internet to e-mail Madamme Tussauds for permission to be able to film on their premises, and also to create an online survey for our music video. We then used facebook to promote our music video and our questionnaire. We decided to publish it on facebook because its a social networking site, which people of our peer group use.

All in all I had to use alot of media technologies in order to help me with my evaluation. The use of email in order to communicate was one example, the screen shots and photoshop was also used in order to achieve our music video, our evaluation, our magazine advert, and our digipack.