Evaluation

Below is the full written version of the evaluation that is in the above Prezi presentation

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

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My music video was made to an electronic house track, which is often characterised by the club/disco/festival scene with which it’s associated, and therefore any media texts relating to the genre tend to utilise bold, bright colour. Since my music video was entirely in black & white, this challenges the forms and conventions of a house music video as they tend to be quite colourful to represent a clubbing/festival scene. For example, as observed in the abstract videos to ‘+1’ and ‘Intoxicated’ by Martin Solveig in my history of music videos post, the use of colour is what characterises those videos and so it could be said, for that reason, that my video does not conform to this typical convention. 

Despite the major differences between my music video and Martin Solveig’s ‘Intoxicated’ video which I analysed for my conventions analysis, there are a few similarities seen in many other observed music videos, such as the use of medium-close-ups on the artist as they lip-sync the song. This is a really typical convention of music videos, and these scenes in my own video were most definitely inspired by the music videos analysed such as this one.

In my initial ideas, I looked at a video by Kasabian to ‘Bow’, which featured the lipsyncing and cutaway video structure seen in my own music video. This video has arguably served as quite a big influence throughout the production of my own video without me really realising it. Even though the genre is not the same, the video features the same aforementioned medium-close-up lip-syncing shots, with cut aways to clips that tell a bit of a story. Not only this, but the whole video is edited in black & white. Both the video structure and use of editing and cinematography are clearly replicated in my own video, and this has served as a huge influence in the production of my own product.

Referring back to my textual analysis, in which I looked at the music video to ‘Proper Education’ by Pink Floyd & Eric Prydz, the whole video is recorded in black & white and features characters that are a similar age to the artist in my own music video, these being two conventions that immediately relate to my own product. The main similarity, however, comes from the stereotypical depictions of these characters. At the beginning of the Proper Education video, the characters are portrayed in what we assume to be a negative way. The stereotype often pinned onto teenagers living in a council estate which the characters are shown to be, are generally quite negative. They’re shown in the media as being ‘thugs’, hanging around in gangs and vandalising property, and the video knowingly reflects on this. At the very start of the video, the characters are seen gathering in the middle of a council estate as a large group and the ‘leader’ hands them all bricks; the leads the audience to presume that they are going to use this to vandalise property. They break off as a group and sneak around the flats, waiting to break in. As the video progresses, however, this stereotype is challenged as it shows they’re actually trying to get into houses to make them more eco-friendly, replacing lightbulbs and putting the bricks in toilets and freezers to minimise energy and water consumption. In my own music video, I challenged the stereotype of a young adult female by showing her to have an alcohol problem. The combination of her age and her gender is perhaps not something an audience would typically associate with an alcoholic.

This links back to Tessa Perkins’ theory on stereotypes. A stereotype is a generalised judgement used to categorise groups of people, they are usually perceived to be quite negative and sometimes offensive towards people of that particular group. However, Tessa Perkins argues that stereotyping isn’t always a simple process, identifying that they aren’t always negative, not always false and not always about minority groups. We can see how this theory applies to both my own product and the ‘Proper Education’ music video, since both videos represent young characters. In the ‘Proper Education’ music video, the stereotyping theory challenges that group’s negative representation; whereas in my own video, I challenged a negative stereotype by presenting the character as someone you might not typically expect to be represented in that way. 

The narrative structure of both of these videos also relate directly to Tim O’Sullivan’s narrative theory on culture and society, in which he argues that media texts all tell us some kind of story about ourselves as a culture or set of cultures. The Eric Prydz music video makes a statement about how not everybody of that age living in deprived areas are bad people, and in fact are doing a lot of good for the community/environment. In my own video, I looked at and challenged the ideas of alcoholism. 

As for my ancillary texts, I conducted research into the typical conventions of three magazine advertisements. I found that each advertisement included as standard: the artist’s name, album name, main image, website, record label and further information at the footer of the advert. I made sure to include all of these on my own product so that they resembled the analysed products as best as possible, conforming to the typical conventions of a magazine advertisement.

In terms of the artist’s name and title, all three products had placed the name of the artist in big, bold lettering and usually at the top so that it was the most noticeable, and then the album name either underneath or around the middle, separate to the artist’s name. It was usually smaller than the artist’s name and therefore in this sense, my product does not conform to this typical convention because the artist’s name was smaller than the album name. This was most likely due to the fact that Victoria’s name was significantly longer than the album name, and the fonts chosen suited their sizes better. I did, however, place her name at the top like most of the analysed advertisements did.

On the magazine advertisement of Madonna’s album ‘Celebration’, the main image was edited using bold colours and a unique style of editing where other images of Madonna had been placed within her own face. This use of editing technique is clearly seen in my own magazine advertisement, as I also placed images of Victoria surrounding her to create a ghost-like effect. This shows how analysis into other products has directly influenced my own.

I also looked at a real digipak rather than one I found online, which was an old CD album I owned by David Guetta, ‘Nothing but the Beat’. Having a physical copy of a digipak was helpful in understanding the design, and I used this as quite a big inspiration in the making of my own digipak. For example, the CDs were numbered 1 and 2 on the David Guetta album with a large number that filled the whole CD to make them clear and easily distinguishable, which is what I also did on my own CD designs. However, I also included the name of the album alongside the numbers. 

Furthermore, to make the CDs look more realistic, I noted that on the digipak CDs for David Guetta’s album, they included small-print text pertaining to copyright and the logo of the record label the artist is signed to. I wrote this same copyright notice on both the CDs of my own product, and applied the mock-up record label of ‘Doom Records’ which is also seen on the magazine advertisement and front cover of my digipak, therefore relating to the artist.

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

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When designing the ancillary texts, I wanted to keep the style of the studio shots in my music video similar to the photography in the magazine cover and digipak so that the products would all be recognisable and link to each other. The photographs for my ancillary texts were therefore taken in a studio for the white backdrop that’s recognisable in the music video. This also provided a ‘cleaner’ backdrop, which therefore meant any shapes/texts added to the products wouldn’t make it look cluttered and busy. Since I added quite a lot of shapes and text, I think this worked well, and the studio related back to the video and drew attention to Victoria in the centre.

Since I wanted the visuals to relate to the video in the best possible way, one of the first things I did when editing the magazine advertisement was put the main image in black and white. However, somebody commented that they personally didn’t feel black & white would work on what is supposed to be an eye-catching promotional poster; and so to add colour to the image, I found a blue geometric design on Google and used a blend mode to add colour and shape to the image. This also relates back to my work in the foundation portfolio, since I used a geometric overlay on my final double page spread as well, creating a consistent and recognisable style. Even though the colour doesn’t necessarily relate to the video itself, it does share similarities with the video thumbnail, and a number of people said they liked the colours. 

As I was working on the magazine advertisement, I asked friends what they thought of the cover so far because something about it was bothering me and didn’t look right; and many of them agreed that something wasn’t quite right with it, but couldn’t figure out what. Some of them suggested to move Victoria and the title more to the left so that the text was a little more central, which did look more effective as it balanced out the framing of the image, but still didn’t seem to resolve the problem that was bothering us. 

The idea to put ‘ghostly’ images of Victoria around the main image was also suggested by a peer when I asked them how I could improve it. They helped by providing another eye when placing these images, feeding back to me in the process of how it could be improved (e.g. adding motion blurs to further dissociate them from the main image). This was also effective because the final outcome of this ‘ghostly’ background relates visually to the theme of the song. 

After completing my final ancillary texts, I asked for detailed feedback from a couple of people based on how effective they thought the products were, and they gave the following comments:

“I think the advert is effective because the imagery is eye-catching and unusual and it reflects the mood of the song very well. It creates a sense of intrigue making you want to view the full video. The image perhaps appears a bit static and motionless, but I really like the Ghosts in the background. I’m not sure about the band of type across the top with the artist’s name, it maybe crops the image a little bit too much. However, I think the combination of all three products together is very effective.”

“I think the advert looks a bit like a book cover and the image appears a bit static, not really suggestive of music. Perhaps looking at other genres of music and other album covers might have given you a better idea for how it should look. Personally I don't like the font used for the word ‘Ghosts’, like with the overall cover I don’t feel like it’s suggestive of music. However, I think it looks professional and I like the colours, and the combination of the three products together are effective. 9/10!”

I think the audience feedback received was fair and helpful, suggesting many different ways which the products could have been improved given the time. I agree with pretty much everything suggested, and the comment about the cover looking more like a promotional poster for a book was an interesting insight and maybe is what didn’t look right to me. 

However in conclusion, both people said that they thought the combination of all three products together were effective, and that they thought it looked professional and eye-catching. 

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Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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After uploading my music video, I shared the link to the video on my personal Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts in response to my audience research where the respondents stated that social media was a big contributor in finding new music video releases. I hoped that with the number of friends/followers I have on each of my social media accounts, as well as it being my primary link to friends and family, that it would boost views and people would leave comments. 

The response was quite positive and the correlation between views and social media interaction was clear, as the video now has (at the time of writing this) over one hundred views which rose rapidly as friends and family were clicking the social media links. This clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of social media to reach a wider audience, as shown in my actual music video and audience response as well as the audience and demographic survey I conducted earlier in the planning process. 

When posting the video link to twitter, I made sure to tag the artist of the song, Higher Self, in the hopes that he would see it. I was really fortunate that he did and he retweeted, liked and replied to it saying “Great work!” which brought a response from a couple of people I didn’t know but who presumably follow him on Twitter. Apart from that reply, however, I unfortunately didn’t get any comments with constructive criticism on the video itself.

Millions of people use social media on a daily basis, it’s free and accessible and a great way to find content and keep in touch with others; so the ease and ability to publicly share content make it a great platform for posting your work with the greatest likelihood of other people seeing it and responding to it. The ability to interact with and share other people’s posts also mean that a large network of people are able to find and access it, such as the algorithms on Facebook that place statuses with more likes higher up your friend’s feeds, meaning the more people interact with your posts, the more likely other people will see it. The majority of views on my video came from people clicking social network links, and so if I hadn’t of shared the video it would have got very little views. I’ve learned that the impact of social media on audiences is extremely high, as it engages with such a large demographic of people from across the world, and the majority use it as their primary internet browsing experience.

As previously mentioned, I didn’t get any comments on the YouTube video that offered any feedback, and so I asked a couple of people to give a written response on things they liked and things they would improve. 

"Good use of shaky cam, with black & white overlay and blurring effects it helps set a tone for the video. Makeup shows the singer's distress, which is good and done very well! Use of slow motion/jerking motion is good, shows the singer's conflict. Beer/alcohol is good, looks very realistically placed (looks like she's actually drinking, very good acting). Narrative is clear and straightforward, and it's easy to denote the moral message from it."

“Dynamic cuts & good timing. Good narrative/cinematic segments. Good use of 2 makeup combos. Black and white was effective, didn’t make it ‘boring’, suited the song mood and narrative well. Singing segments probably could have been more dynamic - i.e. ghosty fade effect, offset framing, flashes/glows, close-ups as well”

“Good cinematography. I liked the swapping between the ‘perfect’ image of character and ‘distraught’ image, shows character’s mixed feelings of sadness and getting over presumed past relationship. Perhaps showing fight or whatever reason character upset and start to give more of a storyline”

When receiving verbal and written feedback, some people stated that they didn’t fully grasp the storyline and wished it were clearer, offering a reason as to why Victoria was so distraught. They said they’d have liked to have seen an introduction to this, for example a heartbreak situation which lead to the drinking. Although this was done deliberately in order to force the audience to pin their own meaning to it, after receiving advice for improvement from the audience, it’s evident that the storyline probably would have worked better if it were clearer. This links in closely to Stuart Hall’s reception theory, which states that the audience are seen as the active producers of meaning, they make their own interpretations on the meaning of a text based upon their social identity. My music video maybe didn’t work quite in the way intended because the storyline was there but only vaguely, which perhaps left the audience confused rather than in an interpretational state of mind.

This also links back to my original audience research, where eleven people responded to my demographics and music video survey. The final question asked them which structure of music video they preferred, and the majority said narrative. As proved from the feedback I’ve received after completing the music video, my video doesn’t follow a clear enough narrative and thus, doesn’t tailor well to my research. I’ve learned from my audience feedback that narratives need to be clear and concise, as ‘interpretational’ or ambiguous media texts doesn’t necessarily appeal to everyone and can confuse some people. 

I have, however, gained a better understanding of the kinds of conventions which audiences enjoy in music videos. The same aspects of my video were continuously praised, including the style of editing (fast, dynamic cuts) and use of make-up to represent emotion. This tells me that audiences generally appreciate the use of visuals in music videos, and feel that they are an important aspect in telling the story. They stated that the makeup quickly put a message across to them, it showed them visually how the main character was feeling without needing to listen to the lyrics. They particularly liked how the distraught and happier versions of Victoria; told through the tear-streaked, ruined eye makeup versus a clean, perfect face; were contrasted, which they interpreted to mean she had mixed feelings and perhaps was fighting with these two sides of herself.

In terms of the editing, most people said they liked the style, and the fact that the cuts were fast and ‘dynamic’ meant it wasn’t ‘boring’ and held the audience’s interest for the duration of the video. They felt that this matched the genre of the song well, as well as helping to support the narrative as it exercised the urgency and desperation shown by the main character. Some commented on the use of black and white, adding that it helped contribute to the overall mood of the song and narrative as they would associate colour with ‘happier’ storylines. From this, I have learnt that the visuals play a really important part in telling the story of a music video, as all of these aspects of editing helped the audience to understand the (otherwise ambiguous) narrative that went with my music video. 

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Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

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At the beginning of the course as a basis for my research, I looked into the history of music videos and presented a timeline of events on a Prezi presentation. Since my foundation portfolio, I have used Prezi extensively to present any work on because visually, they look neat and tidy on blog posts, and allow for a much more interesting way to read material rather than just block text. I am even presenting this evaluation in a Prezi because breaking the information down into slides makes for easier reading and I can quickly and easily attach images and videos. Since last year, I have used Prezi to present work in all the listed stages; research, planning and evaluation, which demonstrates a sound knowledge of this online software. 

One of the main pieces of media technology which I have used since my foundation portfolio is my camera; a Canon EOS 550D. It’s one of the most important pieces of technology used because without a camera, I wouldn’t have been able to take photographs for my music magazine, ancillary texts or film any of my music video. My knowledge of this camera has progressed a lot since last year, I’ve become more familiar with the camera settings (ISO, shutter speed and aperture), particularly with regard to recording video as I didn’t initially know how to adjust these settings for video. Between my AS and A2 year, I installed a profile on my camera that changed the colour settings to make it more suitable for colour grading, which has improved the quality of the videos taken massively since then. In the planning stages of our foundation portfolio, I presented a number of photographs as ‘test shot’ images, framing the subject in different ways including a medium close-up, close-up, two-shot and a badly framed image. In the planning stages of the advanced portfolio, I carried out cinematography development for video which demonstrated a clear progression with camera skills, including techniques such as a pan, tilt, dolly shot and pull focusing; the latter of which required a lot of practice with the manual focus feature. 

An example of how I used the camera stylistically was in the photoshoot for my advanced portfolio ancillary texts. I applied knowledge of shutter speed, turning it down to an exposure of around 1 second and then experimenting with this to create some interesting blurred and ghost effect images. Although they weren’t used in any of my final products, the outcome of these photographs were unusual and captured the theme of my project well. I also used the studio lighting for a dramatic lighting effect, where Victoria stood in front of the box light to create a shadow. I really liked the outcome of these images and they were used on my final digipak. 

As an extension of the camera, other technologies used over the two years included SD cards, tripods and studio lighting and backdrops. I have come across many problems with all of these, such as my SD cards corrupting one or two times. The loss of work is a major setback issue, though thankfully when it happened, the files were able to be recovered by an IT technician. It’s difficult to avoid corruption issues because they generally happen without warning, although memory devices can be ejected from computers properly to minimise the risk of this happening.

General problems with the studio involved the backdrop I was working with. Since the green room in our college is a shared space, very often the backdrop paper would be switched to black or taken down and the box lights would be placed elsewhere. This meant spending some time at the beginning of each booked session rearranging the studio and refitting the paper, which is a tricky job to do in a relatively small space. Since the studio is used frequently by other people, the paper can get damaged, torn and dirty, such as when shooting the pictures for my ancillary text, the paper had a huge tear from the bottom to partway up the back which kept tearing as we stood anywhere near it. We had to cut the paper to stop the tear getting any bigger, and then place weights in the roll of paper at the top since it kept unrolling 

Photoshop is another example of software which was extensively used from the beginning of the foundation portfolio through to the advanced portfolio. At the very beginning of our AS year, we were given the task of superimposing a number of things onto a background of a desert in order to practice basic photoshopping skills which would come in handy later. My skills on Photoshop were extremely limited at the start of my AS year, however, the progression just in that year was huge. By the time it came to my A2 year, I was much more well-acquainted with the programme. Although it wasn’t necessary, I used Photoshop to create thumbnails, titles and my blog header which would make my blog more visually appealing and easier to navigate. The main use of Photoshop, however, came from the production of the ancillary texts. Both texts were made entirely using Photoshop, and I used a variety of tools to create them. These included exposure and colour adjustments, blend modes, polygon selections, shape/line tools, text tools, layer masks, blurring effects and master opacity changes. All of these tools and more were used to apply each of my images to the magazine advertisement and digipak and then apply interesting shapes and informative text.

Finally, another one of the main uses of software was Final Cut Pro, which was the software that I edited all videos present on my blog on, including the cinematography developments and final music video. The process of editing my music video was heavy and lengthy, and utilised a number of features on Final Cut Pro. 

One of the most obvious features was the letterbox which is clear throughout my whole music video. It puts black bars at the top and bottom of the clips to narrow down the aspect ratio, ultimately making the video look more ‘cinematic’ and therefore more professional. In order to accommodate for this when shooting the footage, I made sure to zoom out on the studio clips a little bit so that the top of Victoria’s head wouldn’t get cut off. 

Another editing feature which I used a number of times in my music video was the gaussian blur, sometimes combined with adjusting the ‘video animation’ to make the blur fade in or out. This feature was used to portray the main character’s drunkenness through the visuals, giving the effect that her vision was blurring as the video went on. 

The black & white colour filter was also present in all the clips of my music video, and a feature which a couple of people noted that they liked in my audience feedback. This was used for a number of reasons, the main reason being that the lack of colour set a mood for the video, telling the audience from the beginning that it wasn’t necessarily going to be a happy story. Black & white is often associated with sad or tragic narratives, which is what my music video is in some respects. Another reason being that the black & white made all the colours in the video equal. The lighting in my house was quite yellow whereas the studio shots were very white, and applying a set colour filter to the whole video balanced it all out. 

Finally, the main tool used throughout the process of making my music video