1. Media Evaluation Lauren Pollard For my media project, I worked in a group of 4 with; Myself, Lauren Widdop, Muhammad Patel and Hannah Tabor on a music video based on the song Angels by Allison Crowe
2. Question 1In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? My music video was based on the song Angels By Allison Crowe we named her group as Harlow Winter as we saw it to have some based on the Experimental genre, of the indie pop side of music as we felt this market was not completely filled within the music industry and felt there was a gap here that we could fill. We based our project on Pete Frasers idea that a music video is ‘A distinctive art form which can allow really interesting creative opportunities’. As Music videos are divided into 3 categories, Narrative, Performance and Experimental. The target audience we specified was Aged 16-24 Female Filling the gap in the market Teen to young adult Conventions Includes: -Lyrics -cinematography -Narrative and performance -music -Editing -Genre -Intertextuality Throughout our music video we used many different conventions to help gain the closest effects to a video that you would expect to see on TV channels such as MTV or VIVA. As our music video and song choice was one not regularly heard on the radio we decided to use this to our advantage on the conventions side as we gave the actress who played the singer and individual look to represent the genre of music by putting her in odd style clothing and short dresses in the snow.
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4. According to Pete Fraser a music video ‘allows a more varied access to the performer than a concert’ by this he means that you can use mise en scene and props etc, we explored this in our music video as we have many costume changes which may be hard to conduct in a live concert and also we used many locations to create the right atmosphere, which is extremely hard to copy on a stage, (unless you are a big time artist with huge budgeting funds to pay for this, such as Take That)
5. We use typical elements as they give the audience what they want to see, and entices them to come back and re-watch the video. However if you use a video that has many over the top conventions so there is too much for the audience to watch at once. - They will also re-watch it as they will not have seen everything the first few times around. This gives the audience something new to watch each time and helps to keep them entertained.
10. Also included on both are barcodes. This is essential on albums available to sell, so that they can be sold within stores.
11. At the bottom of both are the credits to the main producers of the album and the record company, so that the buyer knows exactly who has produced this. This keeps them in the know and so they can research the company, this may encourage them to check out other artists by the company.
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13. Our logo fits our brand image as most artists and bands go for this idea of using their name in the logo to promote themselves as we felt even though we want out artist to be of the experimental genre and unique, the best way to put her out in the world and get her noticed is to promote her in the regular way that sure to get her reconised. Other people such as Amy Winehouse, Florence and the Machine and Goldfrapp each use this idea within their promotion : Showing that it is quite popular among the bigger and well known artists. We have maintained this throughout the products including the CD covers, both inside and out and the Magazine advertisement by making sure that the logo is bold and stand out, so that it is not overlooked. If the logo was overlooked, then it is to my understanding that the audience would be puzzled as to the type of Artist and even the artist/band’s name .
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17. This is different, unique and looks more harsh from the thicker larger writing.
24. Question 3What have you learned from your feedback? Target Audiences: You can define a target audience through the use of GRASS G- Gender - FEMALE R – Race - ALL A - Age - 16 - 24 S - Socio- Economic - C2/E (Skilled manual workers, semi skilled and unskilled i.e. Pensioners) S - Status However it may have a secondary target audience being males, younger or older, in a higher socio-economic status. Our music video was focused on a niche market as we saw a gap within it and focused upon this, as we felt that the music industry was missing a big section of artists who build themselves up and are not as well known as others, focusing on indie/pop and folk music genre. As apart from Taylor Swift being a Country singer this side of the market is not very well covered. We aimed mainly at 16-24 year old females and therefore in turn aiming at the ‘E’ category of the socio-economic status. This is as it is mainly targeted at students in college and university. We wanted our video to be reached by all races and not just one specific.
25. Question 4How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages? Media Technologies used Throughout our project we have constantly been using many different media technologies such as : Final Cut Express Indesign and Photoshop Digital Stills and DV Cameras Internet and various websites Blogger Green Screen Jamendo These have all helped and contributed in some way to our final project. Final Cut express was used to place our video footage onto the computer and to edit them into the timeline sequence to create the overall video. This technology had both it’s advantages and disadvantages. Firstly the disadvantage of using final cut express over imovie to edit our video was that i had never used final cut express in AS and so it was hard to learn how to use the software and this took quite a while to understand and be fluent in knowing which specific buttons did certain things, this meant that it slowed down the speed at which we created the video, leaving less time at the end for my 2 ancillary tasks.
26. However the training and help booklet on this helped me to overcome this and slowly understand it, however I do believe that if we had used i movie it would have been quicker and simpler to us. On the other hand by using Final Cut Express it gave a more clear cut finish to the finished product and once I knew how to use it, I found that it had many advantages to it, such as more and better effects/ transitions and in more detail you could edit these to how you wanted them to fit to your work. For example when we used the sepia effect, we was able to edit the colouring of the sepia and tone it down so as not to add an orange clip into our video sequence, we edited to look rustic and old to give it the clear effect that we had wanted. Another advantage however was that the digital still camera was not very professional and so in the end we opted to use Hannah tabor own camera for our ancillary as we felt it produced a sharper picture. Photoshop was then used to edit the pictures as well in order to be able to add clouds to our front cover to make the sky seem more realistic and also to edit the lighting in the picture to make them brighter so they stand‘s out as when the picture was taken it was quite a dull day , however I came across a disadvantage here as it took some time remembering how to use Photoshop. Indesign was then used in order the create the page layout on such tasks as the Magazine advert
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30. An extremely complex layout, meant that it was difficult to locate the devices we were searching for to use within our coursework
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33. PowerPoint I have used PowerPoint to create my overall evaluation of my entire coursework: I believe this has been to my advantage as I have been using this from a very young age and so I am able to work my way around it easier than most software However I do see this to be a very outdated piece of software as it does not have many tools included which has limited me to some extent On the other hand I do feel that by completing my evaluation on this software could be to my advantage as the rest of my group has opted to do their evaluations on www.blogger.com. Blogger Throughout the whole project blogger has played an important role. This has been to update and describe each set of the way, from our introduction, choosing the song to adding the completed video onto. This has meant that we have been able to keep track of the progress we have made at each step of the way. It also meant that we never lost track of thought as we always knew we direction we were heading in with each scene shoot or editing.
38. I also feel that mine and Hannah’s ancillary tasks were a great highlight receiving extremely good feedback, due to the way in which they all link together and show a consistent theme throughout.
39. The use of bright colours and the outdoors, matched the song well in terms of uniqueness and quietness. The way in which the artist looks forlorn and lonely on each picture reflects her feelings within the song.In my overall opinion I am very pleased with the whole finished product and feel that I and the rest of the group have worked extremely hard to get to this point!
