Evaluation- Chloe Roche

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We looked at many artists videos and styles that were of a similar genre as our track artist, such as Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson and pink. These are all female artists so we could clearly see the types of components used in their style and genders music videos. This helped us gain a better understanding of the conventions used for the pop-rock genre. We also looked at our track artist Katy Perry's music videos to see if she had her own personal style or features that were purely her own. This helped us to better understand the artists style so we could mimic some conventions to give our product more elements that reflected the artist, but to still involve other conventions used in the pop-rock genre to give an overview of the elements of this genre.
Some examples of the conventions we used were the jump cuts in our editing. Jump cuts like this are used in many of Kelly Clarkson's videos such as 'My Life Would Suck Without You'. The costume our actress wore in the video is of a similar style and is more on trend. This is one of the features we picked up on in our research so we decided to incorporate this into the video to stick to the conventions. However in some videos we viewed, we noticed that those with a themed narrative would sometimes be set in a different time period and this would reflect on the clothing style such as in Katy Perry's 'Thinking of You' video. However as the majority of videos we watched used up to date clothing we decided to go with this feature as it was easier to produce the style. An example of were we took inspiration from real media products with the outfits is in Pink's 'So What' were the artist is wearing a simple tank top and trousers. We decided to incorporate this into our video with Jodie wearing a white tank top and jeggings as this was a cheap and simple design but still kept with the style used in the music videos of the pop-rock genre.  We also noticed that many artists had more-out-there costumes such as in Pink's 'So What' and Katy Perry's 'California Gurls'. We were unable to create outlandish outfits like those used in these videos as we didn't have the expertise or budget to do so, we decided on the basic and easy design used in videos such as Katy Perry's 'Teenage Dream'. Another thing we picked up on with costume design in many of these videos and especially Katy Perry's videos were that the outfits were revealing. This was unsuitable for our actress Jodie so we decided to design the outfits so that they weren't too revealing but still of the same kind of style to keep with the conventions.
The make-up in many videos was very basic unless they artist was wearing a crazy outfit. So as we decided our character would be wearing basic clothing, we decided to keep the make-up simple too to keep with the conventions of usual pop-rock genre music videos. As the make-up was simple it was easy to replicate if we needed to re-shoot anything or if we filmed on different days but it was the same sequence.
We noticed that pop-rock genre videos were mainly narrative based so we used this convention and included it in our video. We also noticed that there was a lot of direct narrative in many of the videos and as this was a main feature we included this throughout our music video to keep with the convention.
Many of the locations in the music videos we watched were in America and it was clear to see this as there were features of American society. Obviously we couldn't use these kind of settings as we live in England and we didn't have the budget or time to fly out to the US and film there. Many of the locations were in warm places too, so we couldn't copy this either as we only had a small time frame in autumn so the weather was colder and wetter at times. To keep continuity we had to be careful where we filmed and keep an eye on the conditions to keep it consistent if we went back to film in some locations that were outside. The use of the club/pub we used is a type of location used in Pinks 'So What' video. The shots of inside and around the house are types of locations used in many of Katy Perry's videos such as in 'TGIF' (although a slightly different context), 'Thinking of You', and in Pink's 'Family Portrait' so again this was linking to real media products and is keeping with the conventions. We had to use locations that were free for us to use such as our houses and stag meadow as we didn't have the budget. This didn't cause an issue as the locations that were available to us still fitted with the conventional ones.
We used lighting that was already available to us, such as the natural lighting of the sun with the shots that were outside and we used the disco lights in the pub/club and those available in the house. We didn't have access to other lighting apart from a small laser light that we used. Again not having access to other sources of lighting didn't form an issue as the lighting we had available still kept with conventions of the music videos we had watched.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
I think that our ancillary tasks of a digipak and magazine advert link very well to our main product of the music video as we have used Jodie, who featured as the main character/artist in our video, as the image/ photograph on the digipak and mag ad. This would clearly show that they are related as it is the same person. We have also used one of the outfits that are used in the video so this again relates and shows clearly that these products are in relation with each other. We have also used the same sort of colour schemes on the ancillary products as we have in the music video. These elements effectively show that our music video, mag ad and digipak are a combination for the same product.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We showed our rough edit of the first 30 seconds of our video to some of our peers to get feedback on what we could improve and what they liked about it. We found that they really liked the jump cuts we used in the editing. We were told that the suitcase scenes were a little hard to understand and they didn't see where they really fit in with the narrative. They noticed the lip-syncing was slightly off too. To rectify these problems we explained the suitcase shots in more detail throughout the narrative to make it clearer, we also made some shots black and white to show that these were in the past and clearly showed they were flashbacks. We learnt to be more careful whilst putting in shots for the lip-syncing scenes.
After taking this feedback we then went on to finish the music video and showed it to more people. We got a lot of positive feedback such as they found it easy to understand the narrative and they could clearly see how the woman was sick of her husband and angry that he went out so she left him. We were happy with this as we had to change some of the narrative so it didn't include any shots of the husband as our actor didn't turn up for filming. They again really liked the jump cuts which kept it interesting. These jump cuts fitted with conventions. Many commented on how good Jodie was at acting so we were glad we had picked her to do it. The most positive feedback we got was that many people thought it looked like a pop-rock music video, we were very pleased with this as this was the style we were going for, so it shows we included enough conventions for it to be easy to see it was of the pop-rock genre. We got feedback on how we could have improved it such as some suggested we could have used more locations or ones that we more interesting. It was also suggested we could have had more interesting costumes, we would have been keen to have included more exciting costumes but as we didn't have the budget it was simpler for us to use products we already had. Again we were told the lip-syncing was off in some places but this was due to a problem with the quicktime converter as on final cut the lip-syncing was fine. We tried to change the settings whilst converting the video to fix the problem, however this didn't work completely, we only managed to improve it slightly so it wasn't quite as obvious it was off sync.

How far did you use media technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluating stages?
In the construction, research, planning and evaluation we used a wide range of media technologies. Computers and laptops were used as a main station for all of our work along with apple macs. We used blogs to put up all the research and work we have done. This was easier than using paper as it would have included a lot of paperwork. As blogs are a media technology it fitted with the subject so were more suitable.
In the research stages we used 'youtube' to look at other music videos of our pop-rock genre to observe what kinds of conventions are used. We also used it to research auteur's videos etc. and for our evaluation. We also used 'youtube' to put up our videos to share on the internet. We used 'google' and other search engines to research digipaks, mag ads, the pop-rock genre and the track artist among other things. The majority of our research not involving actual videos was found by using 'google'. We also used 'google images' to research pictures to include on our blogs to make them look more interesting.
We used 'email' and social networking sites such as 'facebook' to communicate with each other and share information we had found. We also used it to send out questionnaires to get feedback on our video.We used word to create questionnaires to hand out to people to fill in and to write up shot lists and guides of the work we needed to do. We used printers to print out the questionnaires and information we needed whilst out filming such as a guide of what we needed to say on the evaluation video and revised shot lists. Scanners were used to put hand written work onto the blogs such as the original shot list and the questionnaires people filled in. This was a simple way of showing the work we had done instead of typing it all up. Cameras were used for taking pictures such as locations, costume ideas and possible actors to include on our blogs for the research stages. Photographs were also taken for use on our mag ad and digipak. Cameras were obviously used to film the shots for our music video and evaluation video. Final cut on the macs was used to edit our shots together for the music video and evaluation video. It was also used for our test shots. Photoshop was used to manipulate the photographs taken for including on the magazine advert and digipak. These were also designed on photoshop. So we used a wide range of media technologies in all areas of our work.