Evaluation

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

Our video has a genre of mainstream pop. Within this genre there is a typical girl/boy romance, which we have stuck to and tried to show this within the narrative. In our version of Lily Allen "Smile" we have tried to develop the conventions by having a clear beginning and ending. 

For the beginning we have used a series of black and white photo's of the couple to show when they were happy. However, when Lily Allen begins to sing the video starts and it is in colour showing the present. For the ending we chose to have a burning picture of the couple which the singer then stamps on at the end, showing the audience he is no longer in her heart. Each chorus is in different locations and is addressing the camera. 

This is Lily Allen's music video for "Smile", which we was influenced by, for our video. 
In Lily Allen's video you are able to see the clear links between our video and Lily's. 

          Lily Allen - Smile                                                                                            Our version

Here in these images you are able to see how they are similar. They are both sitting by themselves, which is showing the loneliness they are feeling. However, they are in different locations. 

You can see in my groups version of Smile we decided to show our couple outside and arguing. Although, in Lily Allen's version she is lying down with her boyfriend. Both of these images are giving off a different atmosphere. We chose to show the couple arguing because he is her past and we want the audience to know that.

In these two photo's both of the boyfriends are on the phone outside. However, they are on the phone to different people. In Lily Allen's video she has chosen to have him on the phone to someone who the audience doesn't know, giving the impression he doesn't really want her back. Although, in my group's version of "Smile" we have shown the boy to be on the phone to the singer begging her to take him back. We showed this through a shot reverse shot, allowing the audience to see the reaction of both the girl and the boy. 

In this next video by Ny, this is where we got the inspiration to burn the picture at the end whilst having our artist still in the frame.

In these two pictures you are able to tell where we have got our influence from. As a group, we decided that we had to have a good ending, so we decided to burn a picture of the couple together. This is showing the audience that he is no longer going to get her back and that she is over him. This can also be shown when the singer stamps the picture out like in the images below:

In  this video by Charlotte Church we took inspiration of having black and white photographs, which I think are showing the past.

    

As a whole the pictures are very different as the pictures from Charlotte Church's video are of someone taking photo's of someone else where as in our video the photo's are of a couple. However, like Charlotte Church we have decided to have them in black and white, although, our pictures are showing the past. Charlotte Church's video "Crazy Chick" stays in black and white, where as our video soon goes into colour when the singer begins to sing, showing the present. 

How conventional is your digipak and advertisement?

I think my digipak is conventional for the pop genre as I have used a large photograph of the artist's face, they are also quite girly and colourful. 

Rihanna with her album Loud:

On the front cover for Rihanna's album "Loud" she has used a close up of her face, with a thin white font showing femininity. 

Leona Lewis with her album Spirit:

In Leona Lewis's album "Spirit" she to has gone for a close up of her face following the conventions of a pop album. She has also used a thin white font for her name followed by a thin gold font for the album name. 

For my digipak I have stuck to the conventional pop album as I have also used a facial photograph for the cover of my album, which I think suits the album well. I have also made sure that I didn't cover the artist's face with text as this is not conventional for the genre and I didn't want to challenge this. 

My digipak cover:

Below you will be able to see where i have got my influence from for my advertisement:

Lily Allen:

From looking at Lily Allen's Advert you are able to see where I have got influence from :

As Lily Allen has done, I have used a big photograph so the audience are able to recognise who the artist is. Also I have put a photo of the cover of the digipak I have created. By doing this it makes the audience understand what this is for.

Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisment)?

As there was no visual link that we could use from our video, as a group, we decided to use a floral pattern as our artist was in a park a lot in the video, so we thought this would be relevant. Below you are able to see the floral pattern that I have decided to use for my Digipak and advertisement. Also, the floral is similar to a top that "BEE" was wearing in her video. 

The floral background                                                                                             Bee's floral top

   

By having a design like this I am able to use it on the digipak as well as the advertisement. This is so the audience are able to recognise that they are linked to each other. Below you are able to see how I have linked the digipak and advertisement. 

On the digipak I have decided to use floral to how I made it: The yellow background with the purple and grey florals, which I have carried on to the advertisement:

Here the audience can see that I have stuck with the same floral background, but I took away the yellow background and changed the opacity. This is because I wanted to keep it simple but also let the audience see that they are linked. To make sure they could see this I put a image of the front cover of the digipak. 

I have decided that because smile is just a single it does not have to match the digipak or the advert. 

Influence for my digipak

Cheryl Cole has been a big influence for my digipak because she kept the design very simple throughout, which I believe I have done with the simple floral pattern. Below you can see images of her digipak compared to mine. 

You are able to see where I have been inspired by having the artist name and album name on the CD and having a plain background. Also, I have only one picture of the artist as Cheryl Cole, this is because I didn't think I needed to have a picture on every panel.

Below is a video of me commenting on if my music video will make a clear visual link between it and it's ancillary products.

Question 3 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Making of my advert: 

http://candipop10group15.blogspot.com/2011/01/making-of-my-advertisement-production_02.html

Making of my digipak: 

http://candipop10group15.blogspot.com/2011/01/making-of-my-advertisement-production.html

Question 4 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In this video you are able to see some audience feedback.

Here are some of the words describing my video

From watching this video, I have  learned that

Planning my Evaluation

Before I could begin my evaluation I needed to plan what I wanted to include, such as Links to videos, screen shots, images or video clips. 


I also needed to collect a number of screen shots from the videos that I planned on using my evaluation.

In the pictures below, you are able to see the planning that I have done for each question:

Advert and digipak

I am very happy with my final products. I think that they will work very well together. This is because I have used the same colours as well as the same floral theme, throughout the digipak and advertisement. By doing this it is showing the audience that it is linked for the same album as well as the same artist, also so that they are able to recognise what it is for. 

Below you are able to see what the audience thought of my digipak and advertisement:

question four

 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I when out and asked three different people what they though of my video, what they liked and what could be improved. That gave me a real sense of how people perceived my video.

 Some feedback from class.
'Could of had had more confidence in performing the song'
' more locations'
'Good narrative'
'The use of images in the start helps to indicate the relationship'
'ipod shot was good'
' some of the shots could of bin brighter'
'Burning picture shot was a good ending.'
'bit boring.. to repetitive'

What did I learn from the feedback I received?

' Bit boring... to repetitive'

I agreed with this comment after watching it back, it made me realise that our group could of put some more confidence into the video as the weakest point of the video is the fact of the uncomfortable look throughout. So if we was to improve our video we could of reshot the main chorus shots, making bee move a bit more and changing locations and camera shots to make it more interesting to watch.

'The use of images in the starts helps to indicate the relationship  '

This showed me that giving the audience a clear storyline and establishing the story early on in the video help them watch it and understand what is going on rather than confusion. Also that the typical love story is a good approach as its easy to follow.

question three

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

We was given the task to create three products; a music video, a digipak and advertiment all for one song and our artist Bee.
We started of with the task of a music video.
This took alot of research and planning which we used the following programs;
Google.
from google, i manged to research british artist and theres songs
also i managed to get details for lily allens record company so i could email and ask permission for us of lily allen smile.
Youtube
i managed to look at other real pop songs so i could look at codes and conventions which i could use in my music video in order for it look like a real video. This is where i got influences such as charlotte church crazy chick.




Facebook

This is where i manage to get futher details on lily allen finding out what kind of singer she is and then i could pick a target audince for my music video which helped me begin what i was going to put in it.
Blogger
On blogger i keep an account of all my planning,research and development which was useful to gain feedback and if i needed to reread and keep my ideas for my music video so they could build up .
also i keep my evulation where i wrote my ideas of how i felt my project went overall.

Planning and development also involded using;

A digital camera:
we used a simple camerma with a 16gb memory card which got put into the computers then draged onto our hardrive where all the groups work was.
the digital camera was the thing first given to me to create an anamic story board which helped me get a feel and idea for what i was going to film on the video camera,
this is where alot of my ideas came from as it showed me what looked good and bad which angles ect.
We also did the photoshoot for the digipak and advertisment using theses cameras this was an essital part to making theses products as the main element was a photo of the artist Bee.
A video camera  and memory cards; 

The video camera was a vital part of my music video as obviously i filmed it on it. using the cameras i managed to make it look close to real music video. we had to make sure the camera was in focus as i wouldnt want my music video to be blury. i manage to get the camera to have a practise shoot where i had to film a music video and learnt about lip syncing this showed us that actual singer looked better and gave us a basic idea on what camera shots and movements looks good. Have access to camermas allowed us to film in differnet locations in order to get the best looking music video.

here are some examples of us using the camera filming for our video

Final cut pro;

final cut pro was a vital part of editting as it allowed us to put our music video in order so we could have the photos in the start of our music video, studio shots for our chorus and the burning picture at the end. It also allowed us to razor cut our clips so we could match the narrative up to lyrics and add cross divoles ect when we needed to in order to the video to look good.

Handbrake; we used this to convert our music video from final cut pro on to blogger so we could present it and so that people could mark it.


digpiak and advertisment

Digipak i used the following programs;
 photoshop elements 4.0; where i manage to edit my photos, add text, put all the bar codes and record companies change colours of backgrounds which allowed it to create a link to all my products for exmaple the blue background and graphic design .
For my advertisment;
i also used photoshop elements 4.0;
for my advertisment i had to add a big picture of bee from my photoshoot, information for my target audince, my graphic design and photoshop allowed me to arrange it on a half a4 page which was the size i wanted it to be without any problems and it was smooth.

overall real media technogoly allowed my music video, digipak and advertisment to look almost real and sucseful without media technology i wouldnt of bin able to do this.

question two

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

This is a presentation of me assessing the success of my products.

Question one evaluation.

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

My genre was mainstream pop there are some very clear conventions when it comes to British female singers   for example boy/girl romance is very popular. I will analyse other real media products and compare them to mine.

 My music video

First i will anaylis my music video i feel it really followed conventions of a pop song as it had the main singer bee and narrative highlight the lyrics making it visally appealing to the audinece. It had a clear start and end as the beginging started off with black and white images comming out highlight the reletionship between the boy and girl. whereas the ending was Bee stamping on their photo while its burning. Each chorus has bee singing adressing the camera in a studio or  various location, and each verus highlight the lyrics. 

Lily allen's -Smile.
One of our main influences was this video as it was the orignal song it was a good base to develop.

There are some clear links between lily Allen and Bee's version of smile, here you can see lily Allen on the phone calling the boy that hurt her. Likewise in our video where you can see Bee on the phone to the boy but we change the camera movements as we do a shot reverse shot so you can really see the reactions of each character.  With phone commutation becoming a big factor in teenager’s life we felt this would be something they could engage to and be interested in.

This is the next clear link between videos as in both videos the singers are sitting in a house sitting in the centre of the screen addressing the camera; in bee’s version she is starting at the camera whereas lily Allen is looking down. Female singers addressing the camera is a typical thing in music videos as it makes the audience feel interested and eye contact is always good to give.

The last main connection between our influences lily Allen's smile, is then ending where a picture 'of the relationship' is burning and lily Allen’s revenge of when she gets someone to wreck and destroy the boy’s house.  Lily Allen’s video choose to develop and create an extra layer of meaning by doing this, I felt in our video this meaning of revenge could bin conveyed but also a sense of hate and the ending of a relationship could be portrayed as well.

So as you can see Lily Allen's video and our video are very similar I feel we change some elements through out though.

 

 Charlotte Church- Crazy chick

Charlotte church is another British singer which influenced the start of our music video, I feel this works with pop video's as generally they have a story behind them and as they are usually 2-3minutes long they cannot show the whole story in that short space of time, so the picture idea is a easy, quick and clear way of getting a point across quickly.

 Charlotte Church starts her pop video with pictures then a bit of footage then pictures again, similar to our video. Our video is trying to show the relationship and what happened in the past, which now has bin ruined and hurt. Whereas charlotte church tries to create a variation of images which appeals to audience. I feel using this technique worked in both videos and would appeal to the target audience, which like the typical love songs.

The last influence/connection to our video is Adele-Chasing pavements.

Adele is also a Britsh singer with her main location being a park, as we didn't have a budget i though using a park would be a good idea as i feel it looked good in this video.

Pop videos generally link in with the lyrics, both Adele's and bees

Video is filmed parts or all in a park. Adele has filmed in a park as her song is called chasing pavements and they are on a pavement in a park where as in our video bee is aimlessly walking while singing the chorus I feel it was a nice location and it challenged typical pop videos being in big fancy locations and still looks good and works with the lyrics.

 

My advertisment

This was my influence for my advertisement as its clear, looks pop advertisement and when you look at it you know straight away that it is lily Allen’s advert. You can see a clear link between my advert and lily Allen's advert. As we both used name of artist, tour dates, a picture of artist and additional information. In my advert there is graphic design to keep audience interested which carries on to the digipak and mise en scene from the video.  As time was limited when producing this I felt to closely follow the convention of an advertisement and not try to developed or challenge them. The last important connection is that it’s very informal which an advertisement needs to be in order to help the artist and can really help to create a style.

My Last production was my digipak of Bee.

 pop digipaks are generally very simple, with a song list and a big close up of the artist on cover usally looking at the camera. The digipak is a chance for the artist to bring across a image or message for there audience which really targets them.  

My digipak follows conventions as my album cover has a picture of Bee looking at the camera smiling with Bee in a simple font. Through out it has the graphic designed which is linked with bee, it also has a clear song list so the audience knows what songs there are and which one they want to listen to. It has the record label, which all digipaks have as a promotion for the company.

Here are two actual albums covers, as you can see they both have the British female artist close with the name and album name. Sometimes Natasha Bedingfield is addressing her audience like Bee, which engages the audience I feel like, is a good technique. Whereas Adele is looking down but as her songs are depressing and sad, this fit in with the context of the songs, this must have a clear visual link to look good and to work.