Evaluation of advanced portfolio music video production.

1. Evaluation of A2 Media Coursework

2. Introduction For this years A2 Media Coursework I needed to create a music video for an artist of my choice. With the music video I needed to create two supporting ancillary texts, that includes a magazine advertisement and a ‘digipak’ for the artists single. The ancillary text is promotes the artist and attracts the attention of the target audience. The magazine advert is used to promote the release of the single and the ‘digipak’ is used to package the project. Digipak represents the style of the artist. I’ve chosen to work as an individual for A2 Media Coursework. I had to choose everything myself and had some difficulties, especially choosing which type of genre I should use for my music video and what song. In the end I’ve chosen R&B because I believe that it’s one of the most famous music genres. As I don’t really listen to R&B artist it was hard to choose what song I should use for my media coursework. In the end I’ve chosen Ashanti –Only U. My target audience are teenagers and young adults, at this age people mainly listen to R&B, Hip Hop or Rock genres. I also had some problems involving filming times and etc. But I think that I managed to do well throughout the whole production. I tried to make my music video as good and professional as possible. I tried my best to develop and challenge the conventions of the real media products. By only developing the conventions I believe that I would have gained not a lot of experience. I also believe that each product has to have it’s own idea and style. I tried to make my product have the same combinations throughout the whole process. I used different media technologies so that I would gain more experience and I also received different feedback for my media products.

3. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Me talking about my video The digipak that I have created for the artist I believe has similarities of the already existing products. I have analysed two different digipaks so that I would understand more how it should look. So I would get more of a challenge I haven’t analysed R&B genre digipak. Also by not looking at the genre that I have chosen I get more freedom for making my digipak. I have taken some ideas from the digipaks that I analysed like the name of the artist is at the top but it’s not in the middle. I think this allows the consumer to notice the product more easily. I decided to use a close-up shot of the artist on the front so that she would get as much attention from the target audience as possible. The back of the CD package contains common conventions like the track names, bar code, and an image of the artist. From the digipaks that I have analysed the image is either on the left/middle side or is used as a background. The image I used is placed on the right hand side so that the track names would be noticed more. I also have included many images in the digipak as I believe that it would interest my target audience most. To challenge the real media product I have included two quotations. People don’t find that on digipaks that often so I thought to make it more exciting.

4. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? The magazine advert develops/challenges the conventions of the magazine advert. As I have analysed two adverts I noticed that only one image is used to challenge this I used one main image and couple images as the background but it’s not too visible. I think that it makes the advert look different from other adverts. The other challenge that I have included is that I wrote what places it has already won to attract the audience. In the adverts that I analyse they haven’t used such way of advertisement. I haven’t included that one of the songs feature Ja Rule as I continuously wanted to focus on the artist. The background isn’t the same throughout as I wanted to make it different from other adverts. The top of the advert is white and the bottom has dark brownish colour. I have included ‘iTunes, HMV, Amazon’ as this is one of the most important conventions of the magazine advert. On the top right corner I wrote ‘Out Now’ so that the audience would know that they can go and buy it now. In overall I believe that I have challenged, developed and followed the conventions of the real media products. All three products that I have produced are interesting to me and look as professional as I could make it. If I could change some things I would try to follow the style throughout my products more than I did.

5. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? I feel that the combination of my main product and ancillary text is quite good. In some parts the main product (music video) and the ancillary text (magazine advert and digipak) doesn’t connect but mainly I believe that it does. I’ve tried really hard to make everything look connected and pretty. I tried to make sure that the artist image is seen throughout the music video and the ancillary text. During the music video the clothing and make-up had been quite dark, this connoted that she’s alone and sad. The music video has been mainly filmed at night because I thought that it increases sexuality of the artist. To make sure that it would look like the music video and the ancillary text is for the same artist I made the background of the digipak dark colour (black). Also for the digipak I made the CD’s dark blue colour to make sure that the main product and digipak follows the trend. The magazine advert contains some dark lines in the background. If the consumer would look close enough they would notice that the lines contain dark shapes of the artists. The font used for the title of the artist is used throughout the ancillary text; this gives similarity to the audience and it promotes the artist in the best way.

7. What have you learned from your audience feedback? When I finished the music video I have presented it on the network site ‘www.youtube.com’ so that I would get a wider audience feedback. ‘YouTube’ is a very popular network sites which are used by people in different age groups, different cultures and etc. I think that it’s the most effective way to present your work to the world. The feedback that I received was mainly positive. I think that’s because I have considered the previous feedback. Many people loved the ending, I received comments such as “Love the end!!!”, “The end is totally... *_*”. I’ve talked to my media teacher and he told me that I needed to do something with my ending. From these comments I understood that I did a good job with it. I also got feedback about the whole video. The feedback was mainly positive, the comments were “damn..Love this video.. Everything is awesome..”, “Super Duper XD”, “this video is incredibly perfect.. I love it *_*”. I am very happy with these comments because it shows me that I did a good job. In the conclusion I am very pleased with everything that I have done. The negative and positive feedback has influenced me to do better. It would have been better if I would have received some more of the negative comments so that I would have known what I needed to do more. This is the feedback that I’ve got from my target audience

8. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? During my whole coursework I have used media technologies to make sure that my coursework would reach the best that it could. To do my some of my planning and researching I mainly used ‘Microsoft Word’ and internet. Through the internet I researched the artist, R&B genre, and other music videos. To research other music videos for different artists I used ‘YouTube’ as my main web page. It gave me loads to choose from and I got my main idea from those videos. From the videos I learned the main conventions of R&B genre and different shooting styles. For some of the videos I took ‘Screen Shots’ so that I could back up my research. To save the shots in the right format I used ‘Paint’ as my program. I am most confident using paint for these kinds of things. I used paint also to save the Lyric annotation so that I could upload it to my blog. For the information about the artist and genre I mainly used ‘Wikipedia’ page as I believe it gives most information. To upload my storyboard that I drew I used a scanner from my mums work because it was the quickest way to upload it. I used my photo camera to take photos of the locations were I was shooting the video. As it was my camera I didn’t have any issues using it. To construct my music video I used ‘iMovie’ program at school on the ‘Mac’ computer. At first it was awkward to use it as I never used such a program or such a computer, but I quickly got a hand of it and figured how to use the basic features. The first draft of the music video was mainly experiencing the new technology, I think for my final music video I did much better than the draft. I enjoyed that a lot because I had a chance to use something that I never used; it was an amazing experience. I believe that my music video could have been done better and more professional. I think I would need to put more effect to the music video so that it would attract consumer’s attention more. I also think that I would need to make the video more energy at some points because the music gives out more energy at some points than the visuals do.