Charlotte Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

 conventions of real media products ?


Our music video challenges other forms of music videos through use of different conventions and transitions. The song we chose to do was You are the moon" by The Hush Sound. It is a Indie pop band who produced this slow and sad song.Through planning a lot and developing new and old skills we were able to have a clear vision of what we wanted to produce. We spent a lot of time looking at different music videos such as Beyonce 'Best thing i never had' Adele and Christina Perri  'Jar of hearts'. Through looking at these it gave us inspiration towards what we wanted to include and make.


We also spent a lot time looking at costumes used and what kind of angles and pictures we could include to develop the music video as a whole. After talking to the teachers we had realised that clips needed to be quiet quick and alot of them in order for our audience to keep focused on the music video as a whole. Therefore we went back to basics and looked at what we could include.


Along with this we noticed that the main focus had to be on the singer and alot of close ups of her face needed to be included these tend to be used throughout all music videos. Transitions such as slow motion also enabled to show the past from the present.


Our main aim as a group was to create a professional music video which ran smoothly whilst meeting the aims of the task. We feel that although there were certain things we may have liked to include after feedback we were satisfied we met the needs of our audience along with thinking about the Goodwin's points.


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


The main thing we considered whilst doing all three of the tasks was the artist. We knew we had to include her in all 3 and promote them as the main person. As a group we always had clear ideas of what we wanted and although sometimes we had different ideas we worked as a group to pick the best one and get our ideas across.


The images used for the magazine advert and digi pack were taken from the music video itself. At first we did plan to go out and take more professional images which would promote her as an artist however due to difficult circumstances we had to use images from the music video and try are best to make sure they were professional.


We again spent time looking at previous artists magazine adverts and CD covers. Kelly Rowland was the person i researched into and looked at. Are magazine is totally a different feel and image. We knew that if someone saw the advert in a magazine and went to buy it they wouldn't be getting something different in the music video. 

We decided to do something different form other groups and use a QR code. This enabled are audience to be able to link back to our website( Blog) and read up-to-date information on The Hush Sound.


3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?


As a group we were given alot of positive feedback from others. We feel having competition in the class made us plan more and work a lot harder for ours to be the best it could be and well thought out. Our pitch covered nearly all aspects of planning with plans set out for each lesson. The feedback was a great way for us to see what others felt and feel about our music video and get both the good and bad points and improve it ready for the deadline.


First of all we had to rough cut which gave us a real idea of where we could improve and what was going wrong. After watching it back ourselves we saw things we didn't quiet like. Things such as clips being to short and clips not running smoothly. Of course we knew that we needed close ups of Abbie and we really did try hard to get Abbie into the role of the artist. Both Abbie and Ed worked well together with the acting and really made us believe in what we were seeing.


There were also alot of good points like the lip syncing being convincing and our storyline being well thought out. This was all down to good planning and really thinking about every second of the music video.


Again we got comments for our final peace which again some we agreed with and others we didn't. We learnt through talking to nick how clips really do need to be quick and alot of them to keep the audience engaged with what is on screen.


From personal point of view i have learnt how much time it takes to put together the music video and how limited you are to meeting a deadline. I also realised how many clips you had to have to get just one that could go in. As a group we ended up with 100 clips and we only used about 20 and most of them had about 30 seconds of clip used. If i was given the opportunity to add anything to it, it would be more transitions with 3 clips shown at one time.


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


We spent a lot of planning and time looking into what kind of transitions we may include and filters on final cut express. It was a struggle at first to work final cut however once we were in the swing of things it became easy. Using this programme enabled us to put together a processional peace of work. If lighting was bad we were able to amend it through this programme to fit into the right sense of feel for the music video. We went on you tube to research into some of the teqniues we may consider to use and these showed us how to make them work on our own work.


The blog was possible the best peace of planning equipment we used. This became the main thing we put ideas and thoughts on. We spent ages updating every last detail we had so that if someone was to read it they would see the idea very clearly. We still even after the work has been done blog what we plan to do in the lessons up to our evaluation in order for us all to be aware of what is happening each lesson.


We were very lucky equipment wise as we were able to have HD cameras and still cameras which enabled us to get high quality images. This made it better for ourselves so when we see it up on the big screen and it has been stretched it wont look bad of fuzzy. This helped us construct our music video together.


Lastly was photo shop, this was used through out digi pack and magazine tasks. This was possibly the worst programme as a group we had to use. We all struggles to get our heads around it. However with a lot of patience and time we managed to put together a peace of work we were happy with. We kept asking for feedback to make sure we were getting our work right and also did research again in to different filters and special effects we could use throughout.