A2 Media Studies Evaluation - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I believe that the both my main product and my ancillary texts is very successful. The design of the ancillary texts fits well not just with the video but also the genre too. Where the video uses symbolism through light sources so does my digipak and magazine advert as they have elements of dark shading with glimmers of light, brighter tones. My magazine consists of an image of myself leaning against a wall in suitable clothing for the genres with the left of the image slightly darker than the right side to represent emotions of positive and negative thoughts. This also links to the lighting within the digipak case and the video itself.

As for my digipak, I went with a retro and rather bright for the front cover, which relates to the video. Another image within the digipak is when the vocalists of the video are seen standing on the edge of a beach with the sunset in the background. This are the image locations the people from the audience feedback liked so I decided to include them in the design. People who have seen the video will recognise it on the design of the digipak and the people who have already purchased it will recognise it in the video. This meaning more customers are drawn to via both of these methods.

As I am the video protagonist and the one who the audience back in the video I thought it best to include myself on both the digipak and the magazine advert. The magazine advert only includes me by myself as I wanted to make to advert appear more personal and it be like I was acting on behalf of Ωmega. I am to appear as the front man for the band and most popular among viewers and listeners. This is a way of an audience to better a relationship and focusing on a very relatable person, for example the situation was relatable that I appeared in the video to be in. 

I decided to get some feedback from the designs of my digipak and magazine advert from the target audience again and asked if these designs appeal to them and if they would purchase them. The students gave me very positive feedback stating that it both looked “very well made” and “done to a professional standard” and would mostly likely buy both if they saw them in a store or online. These are well produced and I am confident that they are effective ancillary texts.

A2 Media Studies Evaluation - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is key when discovering how successful or unsuccessful a media production is as well as receiving knowledge about how to better the quality of the produce. Their response is the most critical part as they are the ones who the project was design and based around them. Interactivity is a good way to let the audience see the production. This helps us to get a wider range of responses regarding the video as well as improving attentiveness, following separate responses and support the audience’s awareness of key points and narratives.

Our main source of receiving audience feedback was on a face-to-face basis with our target audience. That being people aged between 18 to 24 and enjoy music from the pop and indie genres. Their said that we had a "good use of locations", "loving the saturated effect," and "excellent use of angles, but change the font at the end of the song was quite jarring." We were very happy with the feedback due to it being very positive except the font of the text at the end of the video which could easily be changed. This audience feedback verified that we had done a good and professional job with this production and felt confident that we could call the video finished. If we had not had the audience feedback, we would have saved the “jarring” font.

Another way I expanded my knowledge about our video was by uploading it to YouTube. After uploading the video after a week I checked the video on the site and had found that the video had 150 views and 5 likes with 0 dislikes. In order to get further information, I clicked on the “Insight” feature on the YouTube page and I found that people tend to loose attention after 1:31 minutes which could suggest there is a need for more appealing content or perhaps shorter videos to better fit people with shorter attention spans.

I think that there are many advantages of asking individuals as I received a brief and honest answer. However, even though an issue occurred the feedback proposed a way of making the video better for others that watch it. After the feedback, I have learned that our target audience is delighted with the music video as it conforms to most of the pop and indie stereotypes. Still, I have had much praise about my acting and the music video as a whole. The feedback was very helpful and made our video better and more appealing to viewers.

A2 Media Studies Evaluation - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

We used many media technologies in the research stage should as SurveyMonkey which is an online survey provider which allows its users to gain better knowledge of their subject matter.This site has given me the opportunity to create a target audience for me to aim my project at. I have asked questions such as 'What is your favourite music genre?' to see what genre of music the major of the responders like. I am also able to view my results in a number of formats to best suit me for example a bar graph or pie chart. Even though this is a good and free way of getting feedback it is not necessarily the best as the survey is only to be advertised on my blogger account which I have a very small readership. I did however get some results from my Blogger account which I put into effect immediately when making the group decision on what our project would contain and how we should fit to the needs of the target audience.

The results from my survey showed that 40% were male and 60% were female and 80% of those were aged between 18 to 24. With this information we knew that we would target our video towards an aged range like our own. This made it slightly easier for us as we could relate to the audience more that if it was a much older audience. Another question on my survey was “What is your favourite music genre?”; 40% answered “Pop” and another 40% answered “Indie”. With this we know what type so artists and groups we need to analysis when picking a song, style and mood. After some research and group discussions we decided to choose the song “Shine” by Years & Years due to its blending of genres (electro, indie and pop). It also attracts to both a male and female audience, therefore reaching the broadest audience possible.

YouTube is a video sharing website available to anyone around the world.  This is how we uploaded our final project and also what I used to conduct research for essays and search for similar artists and groups within the genres. Actually viewing the videos also helped us image what our final project should look and sound like. When researching for the music genre we want to use we found this very useful as it contained all the songs that had been released by artists and bands in one place. The category of 'Trending' was quite useful as we could click and then select the music category to see want was the most popular song as well as artist at the time. YouTube is a very successful and amazing for us to better our knowledge on the genre and what we need to look for to make our project as professional and pleasing to the audience as possible. YouTube videos also contain a like or dislike button on each video so in every video we wanted we could see what was a good example and what we need to stay away from and not make the same mistakes. The only problem with YouTube is that when researching in school our computers within the school would not allow the videos to play so prevented us from doing work at certain times during the school day. However, we over came by completing tasks at home and ended up with what I believe is a very successful final project.

I have also used Blogger which I have using now. This is a program which I have used the whole way through the life of the project to log and represent its growth and development. My posts vary from content size but each is as important as the last in this documentation. The posts do not just track my progress but also inform my readership of project at the time. Blogger also allows not just text but also more advanced features just as images, importing videos, presentations and main more. It is a good form of formal and informal social media as the readers can leave comments on each post with any queries. With Blogger account I also have to opportunity to attach labels to certain posts so the reader can search for a certain topic easier to the right hand side of the screen instead of scrolling through lots of old posts. The labels I have included in my account are "Research", "Planning", "Ancillary Task" and "Evaluation". Although Blogger is very good and simple to use it does have some negative aspects such as it can be difficult to arrange images as they jump and glitch around the editable area. And the site itself has proven to be problematic as he has frozen on my whilst composing a post. But with all that it does the job well.

When given a camera to record our video by school we made the decision to use Paddy’s camera (Canon EOS 1200) which was better quality and Paddy had previously used it before so him being familiar with it was a plus. As well as having a higher resolution it also had a larger lens zoom. When testing different shots, we found that the camera contain severely features to give the image or video an effect. We used one which reduced the shutter speed when film shots that contained driving scenes, this gave an effect that we could alter to show the pace and motion of the car in a clear and crisp motion. It also increased the light exposed of the shot resulting in little to no glare. One issue with the camera was that when zooming in the image was sometimes jumpy and took a little while to focus. However, we used this to our advantage as it created a good effect a gave the mood a faster pace.

In additionally we used a tripod which was quite simple but it did the job. We used the tripod in order to achieve a steady, clear shot instead of shaking hands. The tripod also has a handle to move and operate the camera whilst filming rather than physically moving the camera and potentially making the image shaky. Furthermore, we used a dolly momentarily with the tripod as a means of increasing the height of a shot angle and maneuverability of the tripod as it was for a tracking shot of myself walking down a corridor. The dolly provided a smooth tracking shot which was very effective when filming.

In the previous year we had used all this equipment before but this year we got our hands a new piece of technology, the lighting rig. This allowed us to film in the dark and still capture the crucial shots. With this we were able to make the video look and feel more professional as we would just have to wait until daylight but we used it when referring to the symbolism within our video with the use of different light sources. A problem with the rigs nevertheless is that they are very light structure so they need to be constantly manned so they did not fall and brake.

We edited our shots on Final Cut Pro X, which is a very popular film editing software amongst independent filmmakers and professional YouTubers themselves. Even though this department was Paddy’s job he showed the group what he had do to the shots in order to piece them into a video that ended as a very good and professional looking produce. Paddy use the features of the software such as the sound mixing to edit the volume of the song at certain times when we wanted the viewer to hear another sound. As well as the use of speeding or slowing down the speed of the film to achieve what we wanted to achieve.

A2 Media Studies Evaluation - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Does your video meet or challenge conventions of music videos?

Our music video both adheres to and challenges the conventions established by pop music videos of the past. We used a closed structure as it is a convention of music videos and it is more satisfying for the audience to have closure. It is ambiguous in the sense that we don’t know where this boy is going with his life next, but we have the clear, definitive end to the story and closure as we know he has moved on from the breakup of his relationship.

Unlike Years and Years "Shine" our music video was different in that it actually had a narrative. It is not typical of a music video of the elecro dance genre to have a storyline as they are normally concept based. For example, the stereotypically boyfriend and girlfriend situation of where one catches the other with a new love interest. As well as having a narrative in our video challenges the conventions of a typical electro dance video as they are normally heavily concept based; however our video contains a narrative.

Another convention that I feel that we challenged was that in a typical electro dance video there is a lot of extremely fast paced shots and actions such as dancing. We had included some of these shots but also slower motion within the video for the audience to better understand the narrative. A similar aspect of our video that uses convention of a real music video is the colouring/ lighting we use. Our video is mainly set at night and early morning to show the different representations of light sources. This represents the different moods and emotions the characters may feel at the time.

The 1999 Children Now report stated that the majority of male characters in the media are heterosexual, that being associated with the world of work, and hiding their emotions. While we use the convention of the heterosexual character by showing his relationship with a female we challenge the other two as our lead protagonist has no association with work during the video and reveals his emotions to the audience.

 Laura Mulvey talks about the male appearance in the media. We however challenge the representation of women in music videos. I found out that 44%-81% of music videos contain sexual imagery or some form a sexual content. Women are often more so than men to be presented in provocative or revealing clothing to sexually objectified them. We go against this convention by having a suitably clothed female character presented in a non-sexualised way. Women in music videos are frequently portrayed as decorative objects that dance and pose and known as "eye-candy".

Our video obeys to Marx and Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony which describes the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society, as we only have white characters in a society where other races are few in this area and whites being dominant.

Todorov’s narrative theory says that every narrative follows this structure to matter what: equilibrium is disrupted, characters recognise the disruption and attempt to repair, resulting in a new equilibrium. Our video conforms to Todorov’s structural theory, even though it is intentionally edited in a different nonlinear structure. The story starts with the equilibrium of a young male in a relationship with a young female, the disruption is that she has found a new love interest and decides to cheat, lead recognises this betrayal by finding them, the attempt to repair is a conversation between the two in order to sort out the issue, and the new equilibrium is the lead having moved on from her and resulting in being happy with his new situation. We used this structure as audiences are used to this try of situation and can easily relate to the leads scenario.

Vladimir Propps who suggest the theory of character types in all media texts; that being that there is seven main characters that every narrative follows but ours just includes six. His characters as listed in our music video are as follows: the ‘Princess’ that needs saving which can be defined as the boyfriend being helpless and needs to be rescued, the ‘Hero’ being the same person of the ‘Princess’ as he saves himself from the relationship - this is much like Taylor Swift’s music video of Shake it Off as she too starts as the ‘Princess’ but later is revealed to be her own ‘Hero’ as she becomes her own dominate figure, this is representing the power of women even if they are alone. Other characters include that of the ‘Villain’ the girlfriend, the ‘False Hero’ of the new lover and lastly the ‘Helpers’ which are the group members who are seen singing as well.

Magazine Advert

This is my magazine advertisement for the release of Ωmega's new album "Ωmega". The CD consists of our projects song "Shine" as well as many others listed on the back of the DigiPak. I decided to go for a somewhat laid-back imagery with how I have placed myself leaning against a wall whilst appearing a bit absent. I stuck with the modern day clothing to better relate to our audience and the same reason why the clothing is similar in our video.