Evaluation draft questions

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Throughout my work I have shown many different ways In which I have developed, used and challenged the natural codes and conventions of music videos, website and magazine adverts. One main set of conventions are Goodwin's 7, which is Andrew Goodwin's list of 7 things a music video contains. These 7 things are:

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics - music videos will be based around the genre of music
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals - lyrics are normally shown by visuals in the video
3. There is a relationship between music and visuals - where different things within the video (e.g camera) are affected by the music
4. Demands by the record label - the record label the artist belongs to will demand certain things from the video e.g close up of artists
5. There are references to voyeurism - (voyeurism - the practice of obtaining sexual gratification by looking at sexual objects or acts) examples in media is the sexualisation of women.
6. Intertextual references - references to other forms of media such as television and film as well as possibly other music videos
7. Motifs or iconography - something that is repeated throughout artists different videos.

I tried in my video to use as many of these as possible but with any music video it is difficult to use all of them. The one I focused mostly on was the relationship between lyrics and visuals. With my video being a majority narrative based one I felt as though this was the most important thing, but as it is a narrative video it came naturally. The one I feel I focused on least  was the demands of the record label when it came to showing the artist. This is because in my video the full face of the artist is never shown and so doesn't meet this one of Goodwin's 7. Overall I feel as though my video meets a lot of the Goodwin 7 and so therefore follows that common convention.
There are 3 different styles in which a music video can follow - Narrative, performance and concept. Each music video will be characterised into one of each of these styles but most will have parts from others as well. for example a performance video may also include parts of concept in it. My video is a narrative based one but also contains parts of performance and concept along side it and so creating one which has all three styles.
When it came to my two ancillary texts I decided that for both the website and the magazine advert I would stick to the conventions as much as possible because I believe for these two the conventions are there because they are most popular with the audiences of them. With my magazine advert I included lots of colour and picture with key words referencing to the band as well as tour dates and sponsors. Whereas my website contains a lot more information and links to websites such as the bands shop and music video. I feel like I have mostly followed the conventions of real media products.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
My two ancillary texts I have created are the magazine advert and the website for the band, which I decided to do because they were most challenging and believed if done right would look the best. Both of the products are highly centred around the band, rather than the song. I decided to do it this way because I felt it was a more realistic representation of a real media product and looks much better than doing them based around the video or song, as I believe that would look cheap and tacky, and also breaks the common convention. I have mentioned this because at one point I did consider creating the web page for just the video, styled like the post modern advertisements you see today for films such as 'The dark knight' (webpage screengrab). But even though mainly based around the band I have inputed within each piece. either links or references to the song and its video(screengrab evidence). These two put together create synergy amongst each other which increases the amount of views the video will get and increase its popularity amongst the target audience.
Across all three pieces (video, website and advert) there are several links between them which supports the synergy that each product has created. Synergy is when multiple elements of media forge together to create one combined media product. One reoccurring theme is the heartbeat symbol. I have used this as a reoccurring theme because it is the bands symbol for their last tour which is advertised in the magazine and at the end of their new music video. I have used this reoccurring symbol in an attempt to bring all the pieces together and create this synergy amongst the products, Another thing that I have used and reoccurs across the three is the light blue colour. I have used this again to purely create this synergy across the three(screengrab). This repetition and likeness, I hope, will increase the recognition of the band and therefore the video I have created.
I believe through this attempt to create synergy I have linked each of the products and massively increased the size of the audience that will be viewing, and ultimately judging, my final piece. In conclusion to this question, I believe through the use of reoccurring colour schemes, symbols and even key words I will increase the effectiveness of my advertising for my video in the same way that massive corporations and artists do in the real media world, through recognition of repetition.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Early on in the research and planning stages when I came to do my audience survey, I created one in which I felt included key elements that I needed to be answered from a different perspective than my own. Once I had created my survey I posted it on Facebook and waited for people to respond(screengrabs of different questions on survey). Unfortunately I had not anticipated that I may not get many replies so I took it down and focused on other things at the time. So when it came to doing it again I decided that I would talk to close family and friends who were mainly part of my target audience. To do this I showed them my ideas and asked what they thought of it, which unfortunately means that I have no real evidence of audience feedback other than my initial survey in which no one responded. The feedback I got back from them was immensely useful and I used it as much as I could to adapt my video when I began production.I learnt a lot about things that sounded good and the stuff that didn't sound so good and used this information to my advantage. I had feedback from past student 'Danny Hammond' who helped in putting together my final idea. After I began filming I started to ask people again what they thought of the way I had done it and if anything needed redoing. This again aided me to develop my video around what my target audience desired from it and improve my video in every way I can. But it wasn't just my video that I used this audience feedback to enhance. I also used it during the production of my two pieces of ancillary text. I used feedback from fellow classmates on how to vamp up the styles I was using and how to make it look more like a real finished piece of media. I also used all the valuable feedback I could get off of my teachers who also helped a lot during the process, guiding me into creating something to its full potential. The audience feedback I compiled throughout this production process of my overall products really paid off. It taught me to second guess what I thought looked perfect and even though I may view something as being finished or complete that from someone elses point of view it looks like an incomplete piece of rubbish. The audience feedback played a major role in creating my final pieces of media.

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the entire process of planning, research and production of each and every one of our media products we all used a variety of different technologies and websites. Out of all of these different technologies there were many useful ones and some ones that were not so useful mainly due to their lack of ease of use. The primary piece of technology we used was blogger. Blogger is an easy to use blogging website in which we had to record in detail practically everything we have done in, and out, of standard lesson time. It was a very easy to use interface and could be used practically anywhere and so I felt as though it was the best way to record our activities. For our main media product, our music videos, the majority of us, including myself, used Final cut pro. We used these on the Apple macs provided to us at school. The program itself was very confusing to begin with as when we started our video editing it had recently been updated, meaning the layout had been altered since we used it in year 12 for our thriller videos. When we first used the program the majority of us had no idea what was what and so we spent lesson time working on our own personal macs getting used to the software as well as being taught most of what was what. We also did a task in which we were to teach a lesson on how to do certain different things on Final cut pro. After getting the hang of it, it became much more simple and was so much more vastly impressive than iMovie in ease of making precise altercations of our videos. In conclusion for Final cut pro, its complexity at first was overwhelming but once we got a feel for it its complexity worked to our advantage in producing a better quality finished media product. Throughout the course whilst blogging the main website I would use is Prezi. Prezi is a lot like powerpoint but a lot more sophisticated and professional, and also offered a wide variety of designs and other inputs. Much like power points it works on the basis of blocks of information that can be read and then motioned along to the next block of information. The main advantages of Prezi was the ease of use, the more professional look and that it was less complex to transfer to blogger, which meant it was my first choice when it came to posting on the blog. Whilst producing both my two ancillary products I used two different technologies. The first, which I used for my magazine advert, was Photoshop. Photoshop is a very popular image creating and editing software in which you can produce professional standard pieces. Another complex piece of technology, it took a few times to get into the use of it but once I got the hang of it, just like Final cut, The complexity worked to my advantage and helped create a more finished looking product. For my website I used Wix.com which is a website in which you can create your own website. The look and finish of my website that I created using wix is one that I do really like the look of but for me I felt that Wix was a very difficult website to use and did not offer the return the other complex technologies did once you got the hang of it, it just wasn't for me, but saying this I did really like my finished product. Overall, all of the technologies we used throughout all three stages of the year (planning,research and production) I feel they all lived up to the standards that you would expect of a real media technology. They all created grade A pieces of media, even if they were difficult to use and so I believe they were the most effective technologies that we could have used given our resources.