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

I think our video follows the conventions of a music video coming from the Rock genre, because we made sure to research videos from the rock genre so we could pick up codes and conventions and see how they were formed. All of the videos we looked at had either a whole video of band shots with a range of different camera angles, or a mixture between band shots and a narrative which is what we ended up doing.

My magazine advert and CD also follows the conventions. I researched many adverts and CD's from the rock genre to see what mine should look like before completing my draft work. Through my research I found out how I should set my products up, from the layout to how much I would say the CD will cost.

I wanted to make sure my products followed the forms and conventions of real products so they would be recognisable to audiences of our chosen genre. I feel the point of creating ancillary tasks is so you can announce that there is an album out that they can buy, so if for example, magazine advertisements are set out in a way that audiences recognise and know they like then they are more likely to go and check it out, however if they don't recognise it this could persuade them not to go and look at it because it's something they are not use to.

Evaluation: How did you use new technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

For my research I mainly used the Internet and sites like Google and YouTube.  I used Google to look at products from bands within the same genre as us so I could see what was needed to put on my ancillary products. Phone cameras were also used when we went location shooting or when we just needed a snap shot of something, these were good because they were quick to use and easy to carry around.

Social network sites such as Facebook and Skype were extremely helpful when planning our ideas because we could easily communicate with each other at home. Skype was good to use as we could video call each other to show what we had done, for example if we had found a font to use or if someone had created a mood board of ideas and we could give group feedback and make quick decisions without having to wait until we saw each other the next day at school.

Before evaluating we used a video camera and a phone video camera to get feedback from our peers in which we could find out what they thought was good or bad about our video, so during evaluation of our project we could refer back to the videos and to what people had said.

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

For the ancillary tasks, as a group we came up with a style guide which we would follow. This had the font, colours and logo we would use on our ancillary tasks. This was really useful because it meant that at the end all of our products looked like they came from the same production because they all had similarities within them. Trying to link the video to the ancillary tasks was a little harder, but I managed to link mine by using pictures that were taken in the same location as the band shots from our video. The band shots in the video also have a warm colour tone to them which I also tried to incorporate in my magazine advertisement.

Evaluation: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback helped us a lot with our video because the first idea we came up with was intended to be our final idea however, once we had put all the shots together and had created the video we noticed ourselves that it couldn't be our final idea and after feedback from our peers saying that the location we used wasn't good and it was quite boring because it had no narrative we decided we had to change our idea. We had a couple more failed ideas that audiences said were boring and didn't link with the song. Finally we came up with the stalker narrative, this had positive feedback from the beginning with people saying it was an interesting idea even before we had started filming. Once we had our final edit people said that the lip syncing was good, our locations were interesting and the mise-en-scene we used fitted in with the rock genre.

With my magazine advertisement, audience feedback helped me notice the mistakes that I hadn't originally seen. For example I had finished a final edit of my product and showed it to one of my peers and they noticed that I had put a banner saying that the CD will be available to buy on presale soon and then a box above it saying 'album out now', this is a huge mistake that would have gone unseen if I hadn't have asked for my friends feedback. Other than that I had some positive feedback about the layout, the shot I used and the colour scheme.

I started my CD by doing the front cover's first so I could get them completed before moving onto the inside booklet. I was happy with my first draft of this and feedback I got was really positive as well, the only thing I had to change was the song list on the back, some people said it would be better if it was smaller so it wasn't so crammed on the back. I then went on to the inside booklet which took me a little longer because even one's from the same genre were set out completely different so I had compared all the layouts and followed the one I like the most, I had positive feedback from this as well with people saying it looks professional and well laid out. I had some constructive criticism with this as well but it wasn't for what I had done it was what I hadn't done and they said I should add in to make it look better, this was to add in the writers of the song at the top of each set of lyrics and after doing so I would agree that it did make it look that little bit better.

Final Ancillary Products

Final magazine advertisement

Final CD digipak

Final Music Video (Paramore - Misery Business)

Music Video - Audience feedback

Video:

Feedback sheets:
Here is a summarised version of the feedback sheets we received from year 10 and 11 media students. Questions we asked were:
- Was the constructed mise-en-scene effective?
- Who was the target audience catered for?
- Did you enjoy it?
We also asked them to write their age and gender so we could see if we had successfully managed to entertain a section of our target audience with our music video

Gender / Age
Male / 16

+ Split screen

+ Similar to real music video

+ Appeals to teenagers of either gender

- Unclear narrative at times

Male / 16

+ Narrative is open - the stalker could be an alter ego?

+ Understood narrative

Female / 16

+ Good song choice

Male / 15

- Too many burning photos

Male / 15

+ Abstract narrative

+ Good lip syncing 

Female / 16

+ Appeals to target audience; I enjoyed it

Male / 15

+ Good lip syncing

- Headbanging is cringey

+ Feels like an original music video

Male / 15

+ Good lighting

+ Good setting

Female / 15

- Too horrifying for kids

+ Good mise-en-scene

Male / 16

+ Cross fade worked well with story

Male / 16

+ Lighting and flashing images were effective

Female / 15

+ Paint on wall is good

+ Characters and costume suit song

+ Words in song relate to shots

- Some scenes could be longer

Creative Arts Night

On the 20th March our school had a creative arts evening in which the work of current year 12 and 13 students was shown to family, friends and anyone else that was interested in coming. Some of the work that was shown was our music videos. We had put a feedback booth outside for people to come and give their feedback on the videos once they had watched them. This was extremely helpful because we could look through their feedback and find out the parts people enjoyed and then work on the parts people had commented on that they didn't like as much. 

Ancillary tasks - further development

Here is the smaller song list on the back page.

Here is my magazine advertisement with the information about where you can buy the CD and how much it will be at the bottom.

Ancillary task (1st drafts) - audience feedback

The audience feedback for my poster was really important because I had originally done the poster as landscape however after showing someone they told me it had to be for a magazine advertisement so I would have to change it to portrait. This didnt take me to long and I decided to get rid of some parts like the sticky tape because I feel it didnt really look right with the rest of the poster. My peers also told me to add some information such as where the CD can be bought and how much it would be so I then added that in at the bottom.

I also changed the back of my digi pak, by making the song list smaller so there was some black space around the edges, I done this because people said it looked "to big" and "a little cramped".

Finally I added more to my digi pak, inside booklet such as the band thanks and the production credits to make it more like a real digi pak.

How theories link with our narrative idea

We have recently been learning about different theories, in our non-practical lessons, and how they can link in with our music video narratives, for example:

Genre theory across media forms
When learning genre theory we read about Negus and he found that attempts to break with conventions often meets with rejection from the audience. We kept that in mind when creating our video and we've followed the conventions of music videos and the rock genre pretty closely. For example we have band shots in our video which were done in a small room, this is normally done in rock music videos.

Narrative theory
Our Narrative could link to Barthes 'Hermeneutic Code' because in our video we never fully explain the stalkers background of how she became so obsessed with the band, and then at the end we have the flame falling to the floor which doesn't really close the story of the stalker so she become a mystery to the audience and it could lead them to try and guess what happened next.

Inside booklet for CD

Before starting the inside section of my CD case I decided to have a look at some of the CD's I own and what their booklets included.

The CD's I looked at where: Young Guns - All Our Kings Are Dead, You Me At Six - Sinners Never Sleep and Jimmy Eat World - Invented. These are all bands that come from a similar genre to Paramore.

Their inside booklet mainly consisted of lyrics to each song on the album, a few pictures and thank you's at the end, so I decided to follow this for mine. I have got the lyrics on a plain black background in white text mixed with pages of band shots (some behind the scene, some real). I have also kept it plain at the moment as it's a first draft, so I can always go back and add some more detail if needed.

Ancillary task development

Album release poster - 1st draft

CD front and back cover - 1st draft

Shots of filming

Idea development / New narrative shots

After viewing our narrative and band shots together on Premier Pro and showing it to one of our teachers we realised that our video was lacking excitement as nothing really happened and people weren't understanding that the first person they saw with the band wasn't actually in the band. So we had a group discussion and decided that we would need to develop our idea further.

Our new idea, which is still linked to our previous one of jealousy, is to have our narrative shots showing the progression of a 'super fan' who is obsessive and has loads of posters of the band (could be seen as a stalker). The shots will show how her love of Paramore builds up to a point where she is seen with posters of the band all over her wall like a shrine. We would then have normal band shots of the band running through the video as well.

To avoid having the band shots in our school gym we went location scouting the other day and found some run down areas which could be potential places to have as a location for our band shots. Locations we found were:

 A boiler room 

A run down garden

Band Shots - School gym

We filmed another set of band shots which would have been cut in with the narrative of our video, however when we uploaded the footage we didn't think they would work. We thought that the the shots we took were good but because we used our school gym you could see a basketball hoop in the background and didn't think that fitted in with the mise-en-scene of our video.

We also took some band shots, which we could use for our ancillary tasks because we would be able to darken the background, therefore hiding the basketball hoop.

For example: Before editing

After editing

Behind the scenes from shooting

Here is a behind the scenes video of when we went shooting in London and what we thought of the day.

Shots from our day shooting ...

Here is a quick selection of some of the shots we got on our shooting day.

Shooting day - Narrative

During the Christmas holidays we went out to film the narrative section of our music video.

Camera Equipment used:

Tracking system, Steady cam and tripod.

Locations used:

Bexleyheath station, London Bridge station, Liverpool St. station, Brick Lane, Petticoat Lane market and Spittalfields market.

We tried to get as many shots as we could at each location, so we would have plenty of footage to choose from when it came to editing the shots we have.

New narrative idea

 We struggled for a while trying to think of a solid idea to use that would fit in with all the elements of the song, and we finally came up with an idea and after pitching it to our teachers decided to go on with this idea, which is a mixture of narrative and band shots.

Our new narrative:

The lead singer Georgina Kerwin (me) is late for band practise (this will be the band shots) and the narrative section will follow me travelling to the band practise. However at band practise is the band and another singer (Joanna Sibley) who wants to be the singer of the band which shows Jealousy and links in with the song. She will be the singer for half of the song until I walk in to the band practise room and push her out of the way and finish the song showing that I have won.

The shots at the beginning will jump between me and Joanna each singing the lyrics and will also show shots of the band as well.