Evaluation Question 4

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

Alicia and I used many different technologies when making our music video. For example, we used a school camera called Sony CyberShot to film all of the shots the we took as it was a high definition picture that we wanted to make it look as professional as possible. This camera was essential in allowing us to complete the making of our music video as it made sure that all of the clips that we got were clear and professional. Furthermore, we used a tripod to enable that the shots we got were stabilised and still when filming on London Bridge and the individual shots with the backdrop with Alicia and Matthew. 

 

To edit our music video we used final cut pro which Alicia had previous knowledge of. However, I had never used this software before (just I movie) but it was easy to use as I started to upload clips to it. We decided to use Final Cut Pro instead of iMovie as we felt that it would make it easier for us to put lots of clips all together and change their positions. Furthermore, one of the main reasons why we decided to use Final Cut Pro is that it has a lot of effects available on it so we could improve the brightness of our clips as a few of them turned out blurry.  Overall, Final Cut Pro allowed us to make sure that ur music video flowed and helped us to increase brightness and stabilisation of clips which improved our shots a lot more. While using Final Cut Pro I learnt a lot about all of the different features that it had and how they worked. For example, stabilisation, importing several clips, adding fonts and cropping shots to make it central. All of these things that I learnt are successful in in the making of our music video and helped us to make I look as effective as we could.

We also used South Eastern Train website and google to help us plan our route around London making sure that we picked the best route that we could so we could make sure that we filmed all of the shots as successfully as we could. The South Eastern Train website enabled us to make sure that we got the right trains to London and back. We decided to go early as it wouldn't be busy and we came back late afternoon. Furthermore, on google we got up a tube map so that we were able to plan each location that we wanted to go making sure it was in an efficient order. We both circled the places that we wanted to go and wrote down what stops we needed to get on at. Overall, we are very happy with the planning that we did as we didn't have any problems with both the train and the tube.

We used YouTube whilst researching different professional music videos and previous students work which was a hugely significant part of us making our music video. This is because looking at previous music videos helped us to come up with ideas of what we wanted to do in our music video and use it as inspiration for shots and locations. For example, one of the students music videos that we took a large inspiration from was the "Love runs out" music video as all of the shots that were used flowed really well and the special effects that were used were helpful when it came to looking at if we were going to put any in ours.  Overall, it was a key point in giving us a clear idea of what we wanted to use in our music videos. YouTube was the site that we also found our music as when were researching our genre the Where is the Love music video came up. Then while we were looking at this music video we found the charity one which we preferred and decided to use.

We also used Facebook for our evaluation feedback and informing our target audience about the questionnaire that we had made. I found this particularly useful as it allowed us to inform our target audience of our questionnaire so we could make sure that our music video appealed to our target audience. Furthermore, Facebook is an extremely popular social media site and has a wide range of people of different ethnicities and ages which is what we wanted to show in our music video which was the meaning behind the song.

Alicia and I used Survey Monkey website to create our questionnaire which was very easy and effective to use as it allowed us to create the questions for our target audience and then share it on Facebook so that we could get responses.

Finally, we used Powerpoint, Word and Dafont to create our magazine and digipack. This was really helpful when making them both as it allowed us to plan out what we were going to do step by step and plan it all out. Powerpoint was especially helpful as it allowed us to add pictures to see what all of them look like together and share with our target audience to see what they liked and what they disliked.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2: 

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

Today, Alicia and I filmed ourselves taking about the question:

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 1:

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

In my music video I have included many examples of conventions that have been used in real media products.


Where you use conventions of music videos of the same genre of your song:

When we looked at conventions of our song we realised that the genre of our music video is Pop and R&B which has the stereotypical conventions of teenagers, over sexualised women, more realistic settings and women wearing provocative clothing. An example of a pop music video that meets these conventions stereotypes is Rihanna as she wears very provocative clothing in her music videos. In particular the music video that stands out to me as being the most provocative is Only Girl in The World as she wears short, shorts and a relieving top. Rihanna is a very well know female artist who has sold millions of singles and albums all around the world meaning she uses this platform as a place to show women have power and to try to create change. Now the conventions of women in music videos are different to how they used to be as women now are seen to be more powerful and have control over the men. Unlike, in the past men have been the centre of music videos having control over women and controlling what they wear and how they act. 

Where you have taken conventions, and developed them in some way:

We looked at the conventions when making our music video and decided that the main ones were gender, ethnicity, class and age. We looked at the conventions of the Pop and RnB genre of ethnicity and decided to use this as the main factor and theme running through our music video. We decided to take the convention of ethnicity and use this to create an overall meaning to our music video, which we did by using both ethnicities throughout to show that they has been a divide between ethnicities over time and only recently they're being treated as equals. We decided that this would be a good convention to use as it is a broad subject that relates to the meaning behind the song. Furthermore, in the music video we used the convention of age as we felt that this was a very significant factor that linked to ethnicity. For example, by using the younger generation with the topic of ethnicity it reinforces that equality has only recently been accepted in today’s society. Furthermore, in our music video we made sure that the female was stood slightly in front of the male to show that there isn't just ethnic equality but there is also gender equality which is starting to be accepted in today's society also. At the end of the music video we show a mid-shot where they're both standing next to each other to suggest that they're both equals. This confronts the stereotype of the convention as it shows we have gone against it to make both genders and ethnicities to be equal.

Another way in which we developed the conventions is through the use of the poster that we created as we could promote the song through our social media platforms which will get the message around to a wider target audience and also by having the posters in a busy place it will attract more of an audience from a diverse background who wouldn't normally listen to this type of music.



Where you have challenged conventions, or subvert conventions of a music video:

For our music video, we decided to challenge the conventions of a stereotypical RnB, Pop genre. Stereotypically, in a music video of this genre they either had just males or females in the music video with one particular race. Therefore, in our music video we decided to challenge this convention and make sure that we used both races and genders in our music video to show how now a day’s times have changed and these conventions are beginning to be challenged in today’s society. Furthermore, the name of the song that we have chosen played a large role in why we decided to challenge these conventions. We also took inspiration from the Black Eyed Peas as when we looked at in depth analysis of the band and the song we realised that there was one female artist in the band who became very powerful over the women, through the way she was placed on poster and magazines. This was significant as it shows that women are starting to have a lot more power over men and gender equality is accepted in today’s society. Furthermore, on the Black Eyed Peas it supports the stereotypical conventions of the genre as the woman is wearing provocative clothes and the men are wearing clothing that makes them look powerful. However, like our music video it also subverts the genre as the women is stood at the front which reinforces the fact that genders are seen to be more equal now a days.

Furthermore, the races in The Black Eyed Peas are both white and black which we wanted to make sure we used to challenge the conventions further to show that times have changed.

The pictures below show how we used both ethnicities and genders throughout our music video to reinforce that both genders are equal. You will notice that in picture 1 and 2 both the genders take it in turn to stand in front of each other. We decided to do this as it reinforces that both genders are equal and not one gender has more power over the other.

In the final picture, we decided to have both of the genders stand next to one another to again show they're both equal and how time has changed. 

Relation to the representations of different groups in society:

 Where you adhere to stereotypes of different representational groups

They're many ways in which we have adhered to the conventions stereotypes during our music video. Throughout our music video we tried hard to not use stereotypical gender conventions that you normally see as we wanted to make sure that our music video was original and presented how times have changed with regards to gender equality. An example, however, of when we conformed to a stereotype is that Matthew wears a blue shirt and Alicia wears a pink shirt. These are the stereotypical colours that both females and males are stereotyped to wear.

Magazine advert design

Yesterday and today, we designed our magazine advert which we think looks really effective. Here are the steps that we took when we made it:


Firstly, we looked at the images that we liked and the images that we think will look good as the advertisement for the single. When we looked at examples of adverts that other artists have made we realised that the image is one of the most important parts about the advert as it is the part of the advert that catches peoples eye. Furthermore, from the target audience research we realised that as well as the image being important the font and colours that are used are as important as the image. We decided to use thee image of Alicia and Matthew looking at each other from our music video as we think that this image represents the name of the song and stands out.

This is the first draft of the magazine advert that we created. We wanted a black background with the image but we realised that it looked very harsh and didn't make the image stand out enough. We tried different effects of which we liked, but again didn't look completely effective. When looking at the fonts on the advert I liked the name of the song font and Alicia liked the font that we decided on to have the date  in as it makes the numbers stand out. We decided to use a heart picture above the images as we think that the background looked too simple without it and the heart added to the name of the band. We overall, really liked the heart, font and image so we have decided to keep this but change the colour of the background.

With regards to the second design we decided to keep the background black as we think that it looks good against the white background of the font. One part of the design that we like is the heart as we believe it links to the name of the band. We decided to look at the different effects that we could do to the images which we added to the image. However, we didn't think this looked as effective as it was a very bold fade which stood out too much.

Our final design which we believe is the most effective. The background colour is lighter and stands out more against the images and the font. We also added some reviews at the bottom as we looked at a few examples of ones that we had researched and realised that most of them had reviews at the bottom.

Magazine advert font

We started to look at different fonts that we liked the look of from Dafont. We needed to make sure that the fonts that we looked at are professional and attract the audience.

Here are a few fonts that we have considered:

1. 

We decided not to use this font as we wanted a font that looked original and stand out and we feel that this font was a bit plain and simple. Therefore, we decided to look at a few other options.

We like these fonts however I think that they look really plain again and simple. Therefore, we continued to look for a few ore examples.

We have decided to use these fonts as we believe these look the most effective and will look good on the magazine advert. I will add these to the magazine that we will make and make a final decision on the ones we are going to use once we have all of the images together.