Evaluation- Question 1

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

GHD Cinderella Advert:
Although we did not use the original 'Cinderella story' idea, this is where our inspiration came from. We used eyeliner to write the title of the song on Casey's eyelid. We were inspired by the face paint used in the GHD Advert:


A main reason how we conformed to the conventions of real media products was by including lip synching. This is evident in nearly every successful music video which is why we included it in our video.

What makes our video look like a real video:
We also used similar shots from original music videos, below are pictures I made which combine shots from real music videos and similar shots from our video:

This shot on the left is from 'Taylor Swift-Fifteen' song, we liked the close up of the guitar as it is an interesting shot. The guitar was a vital instrument to have as the song begins with 25 seconds of guitar strumming. We also wanted to stay true to Maxine's musical talent so we thought the close up of the guitar complimented this idea well.


This is a shot we took from 'Miley Cyrus- The climb' video. The shot of the artist playing on the guitar with an interesting background appealed to us and inspired us to create a similar atmosphere.

We are conforming to this idea of having the artist playing a musical instrument in our video, this is a main idea which is present in many real media products.

As we did not have the technology and budget to create the blue smoky light used in 'The Climb" video we instead had Christmas lights hung behind to create the same magical effect.



We were really inspired by Pixie Lott's 'Cry me out' video. These shots are very similar in shot, action, and black and white lighting. We used a dance studio in our school which is parallel to the empty room Pixie is in. Also the dance movement used in both shots is very alike. The only difference is the costume, Pixie wears a black dress, however Casey wears a white dress to portray her innocence and purity.

Dance is a main theme which we have used in our video, we have developed this idea by using lip synching which is conforming to the conventions of real media products.


Cheryl Cole wears a flowey dress with cream pointe shoes, we used similar costume in our video to highlight the typical ballet outfit. The shot on the left is of Cheryl touching her pointe shoes, in our video Casey is tying the ribbons of the shoes.


This is a shot we took from Rihanna's 'Umbrella' video. The video includes Rihanna on pointe shoes, this video inspired us to include ballet in our new video. The shots are both of the waist down and walking along on 'pointe'.

Rihanna is another artist which uses 'ballet' in her video 'Umbrella', we conformed to this idea of having dance in our video.

In conclusion we followed the conventions of a music video by including lip synching, musical instruments and dance, therefore we did not challenge any forms of real media products.

Evaluation- Question 2

2.) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts (DVD Digipak, Magazine Advert)?

The combination between our magazine advert and digi pak is very effective because we have kept the simple theme which is in our music video. Before watching the music video, the magazine advert shows the audience what the video will be like.

The music video and ancillary texts compliment each other well which is effective because our target audience (13+ girls) who are attracted to the magazine advert will go and watch the music video and later on buy the digi pak.

Links between our music video and digi pak:

We chose to have the same ballet position that is seen at the end of the video as one of our digi pak covers to keep the theme of ballet. This is effective as people know what to expect from the video and the artist by looking at the digi pak.

Links between our music video and magazine advert:

The same image is used of the pointe shoes to highlight the dance theme within the song. This is effective because it attracts our target audience of teenage girls.

Overall we kept the black and white effect throughout our ancillary texts to match the relaxed style of the video. We also used ballet images to reinforce the theme of the song, this is effective as it attracts the right audience.

We also used the same font which is another similarity between our digi pak and magazine advert to insure that the audience who have seen the advert would quickly find the digi pak in the shops and boost sales.

Making the advert appeal to the correct audience is vital as they will later on buy the album.

We also asked a few people: ‘How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts (DVD Digipak, Magazine Advert)?’

This was their feedback:

Feedback 1: 'The black and White theme kept throughout the film was a nice touch; also the dancing shows that the video is simple but elegant'.

Feedback 2: ‘The magazine advert is a very striking image and fits in well with the Digi Pak which has the black and white theme.’

Feedback 3: ‘The digi pak and advert is very stylish and adapts with the song'.

Below is a short power point showing the above information:

Rosela

View more presentations from rosedoda.

I created this PowerPoint on Microsoft office and then put it on 'slideshare' which enabled me to upload it on my blog.

Evaluation- Question 3

3.)What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We made a questionnaire regarding our music video, digi pak and magazine advert. I did this on Microsoft word which I then printed off and gave to students in our media class. I asked them to watch our video and kindly fill in the questionnaire. Below is a picture of the questionnaire with the most frequent answers circled:


By creating a survey, it allowed me to see what people thought of my video which is important as we learn what the audience liked and disliked. This information is helpful because, if we had the opportunity to do the video again or create another video we can use the feedback we received and interpret it in our next video.

In order to get more feedback we created an only survey using ‘Survey monkey.com’ which we distributed through Facebook. A screen shot of the survey is below:


Feedback:
Question 1: Teenage Girls.

Question 2: Yes.

Question 3: Positive: Good Lip synching and dancing, however one person said it was too girly perticularly with all the ballet.

Question 4: Negitive: When the lip synching changes to another location is does not blend well.

Question 5: Magazine advert rated ‘Good’.

Question 6: Could have made ‘Excellent’ if the text was organized better.

Question 7: Digi Pak rated ‘Excellent’.

Question 8: The black and white effect worked well and complimented the video.

From my audience feedback i learnt:

This feedback was a learning experience and very successful, if I was able to do this music video project I would do a few things differently such as:

-I have realised that we have alientated the male target audience as our music video includes ballet, a topic which male figures are not too interested in. Perhaps we could have showed more of the relationship with the male character to attract the boy audience.

- All things considered our target audience research for this type of song was a teenage girl audience. Looking at our audience feedback we can safely say that we achieved our goal as teenage girls said they enjoyed our video.

-Due to timing issues it meant we did not give enough attention to our digi pak and magazine advert.

-I would have chosen the images more carefully and used Photoshop to produce a more advanced magazine advert and digi pak.

-The images chosen are very ballet based which meant that we limited our audience- instead we could have used a guitar image to attract a wider audience or simple close-up shots of the Christmas lights when the camera is not in focus.

I created a wordle image which includes some comments from our audience feedback. I did this on ‘wordle.co.uk’. Below is the image:

Evaluation- Question 4

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

The making of our music video consisted of us using new media technologies. When we began searching for our song and artist we used the website: Unsigned.com. it was simple to find the song we were looking for as they catagorised each artist with the genre of their songs. We chose the category “Blues / Soul / Acoustic” which lead us to our chosen artist : Maxine Vauzelle. Luckily Maxine had a Myspace profile which let us know more about her and what kind of artist she is- her individual vintage and retro style is what inspired us to make our music video. Once we decided she was our chosen artist we emailed her asking for permission to use her song for our media project. The email is below:


Once we got our positive reply we began researching our ideas for our video- this took a lot of time to finalise our decision but we decided to give our video a vintage feel which meant we were staying true to the artist’s style. We used sites like google and Youtube to develop our search. I made a collage of all the images that inspired us. The image is below:


We also came across the ‘GHD Hair Strighteners’ advert which complimented our music video idea. From this video we decided to give our video a narrative- this being the story of Cinderella. The advert ends with ‘Cinderella’ deciding she does not need the prince. We both decided we liked the spin to the original story so in our music video we would have Cinderella end alone and unhappy. The advert is below:


We also used Facebook as part of our research- One of our friends had put up photos from a photography project. The photos had a quirky and colourful theme to them which inspired us to include this idea in our music video. After we asked for permission, we were able to put the pictures on our blogs. Below is an image showing the similarities between our music video and the Facebook image:


When we had filmed our original idea we realised we did not like where it was going in the editing stage- so our decision to start again was very drastic but it paid off. As part of our research and planning for our music video we began to look at artists that are successful in the charts and what they are doing in their music videos. We were inspired by cheryl Cole, Rihanna and Pixie lott- who all had a dance theme to their videos. We liked this idea and as Casey is already a dancer it made this new idea easier. We looked through Casey’s dance pictures on Facebook to get inspiration. We really liked this image which we later decided to put on our Digi pak:


When it came to designing our Digi Pak we used ‘Picnik’ which is an editing website. We put the above picture and began exploring and experimenting with different styles and colours. Below is a few we liked:


The video camera we used to film our music video was different to last year which enabled better quality footage:


Other equipment we used on set was still cameras to capture images of locations, props and for continuity purposes. Also a tripod to ensure our shots was straight and even.

Our editing software was also different this year:


Final Cut is an improved editing programme which allowed us to include more effects and transitions. The detailed and complex software made the lip synching task easier to achieve.

Survey monkey is another website we used in the evaluating stage. We created a questionnaire regarding our music video, digi pak and magazine advert- which we then sent to our target audience (teens) via facebook to answer. Another way I created a questionnaire was on Microsoft word which I gave to our media class to fill in.

Below is a collage of all the different new media technology logos we used:


Bluetooth was used to transfer images we took on our photos to our imac computers.

Audience Feedback

I created a survey which included questions on my music video, magazine advert and digi pak. We asked people in our media class to watch our video and then fill in the online survey. Below is the survey I created on 'SurveyMonkey.com':



The most popular answers we recieved were:

Question 1: Teenage Girls.

Question 2: Yes.

Question 3: Positive: Good Lip synching and dancing.

Question 4: Negitive: When the lip synching changes to another location is does not blend well.

Question 5: Magazine advert rated ‘Good’.

Question 6: Could have made ‘Excellent’ if the text was organized better.

Question 7: Digi Pak rated ‘Excellent’.

Question 8: The black and white effect worked well and complimented the video.

I also created a similar questionnaire on microsoft word. I followed the same procedure where I asked the audience to watch the music video and fill in the questionnaire. The majority of the answers were the same as the results from the 'surverymonkey' survey.

Final Digi Pak

Our FINAL digi pak:



Working on our digi pak:


We found a digi pak template and decided where our chosen pictures will go.

Final Magazine Advert

This is our final magazine advert:

Making the Magazine Advert!

1- Equipment we used to create our magazine advert

2- Cutting out shapes in the paper

3- I created a window effect which meant more space for the image and information

4- I placed the cut out over our printed magazine advert

5- I then placed it in a suitable place in a magazine to see how our advert would look.

Magazine Advert Trial

Today we tried out making our magazine advert, we did this in paint as we are going for a simple advert to relate to the song.
This is what we came up with:

Digi Pak Trial

Today we thought about our Digi Pak, we used this image of Casey and put it in Picnik to create a different effect. Once we have decided on our favourite, that shall be our digi pak cover photo. Below are a few we have come up with:

We found this template on Google, this will help us make our digi pak:



We also edited a few favourite images to make them look more interesting. We experimented on Picnik with the 'temperature' control bar, also used the 'exposure' bar, we created the following images:

FINISHED

Today we officially finished our video; we uploaded it onto YouTube where it can easily be viewed:

Not quite finished

We thought we had finished our video as we had exported it onto tape, but after the weekend we came back and watched what we had. We realised it was not quite finished, we tweaked it by adding some "dissolve" effects to make the video look smoother, also we added the title of the song at the end of our video as we had forgotten to do so.

Mixture

We were coming close to finishing our video so we showed our class mates and asked for feedback. The majority said it was very repetitive and monotonous.

Casey and I decided to put some of our previous work in; this allowed the audience to see ‘the boy’ that the song is referring to. This last minute change has benefited allot as it made our video have a storyline.

New Location

We are back from our Christmas holiday and have jumped straight into filming. Today we re-filmed the guitar strumming at the start of our video as it did not match with the song.



We also chose another location for Casey to sing as we only had one setting for this. We did this in our school hall which was very simple and created a natural atmosphere for our video. We made sure Casey sang the whole song at least 2 times to make the editing process easier and to ensure we had enough footage.