Evaluation Activity 3

The first pieces of feedback were taken following our pitch to our peers. They liked the name of our band -Perplexa - as they felt it was important to our target audience; 'to perplex' means 'to confuse', so when the target audience was late teens/early 20's, the name Perplexa highlights the confusion of the teenagers in the world, tying in with political matters and the idea that it is hard being a teenager - this was received well with our pitchees. They also approved of our challenging of the convention of flashbacks in our video. As normally flashbacks involve a darker, more abstract effect being applied to them through editing, the idea of changing this in our video to a brighter, lighter effect was met with positive feedback.
My teacher also liked the inspiration we had selected, such as Devlin's 'Community Outcast (for its simplicity, which we particularly tried to emulate) and Eminem's 'Not Afraid' (for the conveyance of its message)
After submitting our draft music video, the feedback received was positive, yet there was much to be improved on. Our teacher advised us to change a number of things, the majority of which we agreed would make a more effective, realistic music video.

We then hosted a 'premiere' of our music video to gain extra feedback from people in our age group who could be possible target audience. We gave each viewer a questionnaire to fill in concerning their music habits and their opinions on the video. A copy of the questionnaire is available below, as well as footage of our premiere, and our reaction to just some of the 45 questionnaires we gave out.


Questionnaire





As you can see, our feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Our video didn't score a rating below 6 out of 10 (mostly 7's and 8's), and the themes we were trying to convey - loneliness in the 'Big City Prison' - were received effectively. Themes of 'emotion', 'loneliness' and 'sadness' were frequently identified by our audience on their questionnaire.
Our audience also accurately said our music video was either part of the Rap, Hip-Hop or R'n'B genres. It is unclear actually which genre it falls solely into (there is some overlap) so we were happy with the above 3 being chosen. It is arguable that our song falls into all 3 genres - the rap part obviously belonging to the rap genre, whilst the sung part is more R'n'B.
Much like what our teacher said, our audience commented on the high standard of Andy's lip syncing and rapping. Several viewers said this was their favourite part of the video; therefore it was good that we acted on our teachers feedback to include more of him.
The good thing which we found from conducting this research is that, whilst the audience we showed it to weren't all necessarily in our target audience (they had varying music tastes) everyone rated it highly. This pleased us as it meant we could 'reach out' and maybe gain some viewers not just from our target audience, but also from outside it. This universal appeal is something all artists try to do, so to feel that we achieved it made us very satisfied. Viewers were also asked which TV music channel they would expect to find our video on. Many replied with MTV and AKA, which pleased us because those channels feature quite well known songs whose target audience is very vast. If our video fits in with this in terms of popularity, we have not only achieved what we set out to do (appeal to a certain target audience) but much more; we have expanded our audience to one that is much bigger and more varied than we expected.

Evaluation Activity 2

Evaluation Activity 2

View more presentations from Alex Wilson.

Evaluation Activity 4

How have you used technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Evaluation Question 4 Final

Evaluation Question 3 Final

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In order to answer this question, we hosted a premiere of our video to an audience of mine and Alex's form which consisted of males and females aged between 14-18 and so these all fell into our target audience age range.  We then asked them to fill in a questionare on what they thought of the video and also what music they listen to themselves to get a view of whether or not they enjoyed our video even if it was not there kind of music as well as if they enjoyed it if it was there kind of music.






We had a variety of different responses in the questionares from many different music lovers, most who liked the video we made and some who didn't.  In our video as shown above, we have read out all of the questionares comments with parts cut out as it became a 25 minute video altogether and so we have trimmed it down to 10 minutes.
Some postitive comments which were on the questionares for the question 'what is your favourite part and why?' included 'the rap bit because its catchy', 'Andy's rap', 'the rapping section','Andy Day rapping and dancing'.  From all of these comments we have recieved we have leart that having Andy as a rapper worked very well within the video and that we made the right choice of having him as the artsist for this job as he fits the part very well.  Also as we have comments on the editing like 'edited well to fit in with the beat' and 'editing works well', i am happy with as before we were told by the teacher that we should have more performance of the rapper and so we took this feedback in and then added more perfromance of the rapper.  We were then told that the editing was spot on for the rapping part and so i have learnt that our editing skills are up to a good standard.
From the queston on the questionare which said 'what TV music channel would you expect to find this on?' most of the comments said 'MTV' or channel 'AKA' which were happy to hear as these are channels which this genre of music would be found on. 
For the question 'what genre of music do you think the video is part of?' there were simlar answers which included 'Hip-Hop' as a main one which is what we hoped for as this is the genre of music the song is and so as the audience were able to identify this, i have learnt that the video we made went well together with the soundtrack as a whole.  Also people had commented saying the genre was 'R&B', 'Rap'. The R&B response i can understand as there are elements of R&B in the video and some of these comments were from people who listen to things like alternative rock and also heavy metal themselves, and so they are not used to these kinds of songs and therfore picking out this genre i feel they get the idea that it falls into the Hip-Hop genre as R&B is close to some Hip-Hop and can be mistaken for it.  Having said it is Rap as well, this category falls again, into the Hip-Hop genre and so these answers i have understood that they mean the same as Hip-Hop as rap is part of Hip-hop. 
For the question 'What themes can you see in the video' we were given similar responses including 'Emotion, Saddness', 'Lonliness', 'being trapped', 'lonliness in a big place', 'Inner city life', and also 'depression'.  All of these responses were exactly what we had wanted to show in the video, as our theme was about the artists and characters within the video being trapped in the city and to show their lonliness within the city, and these comments hit the nail right on the head and we have learnt from this feedbak that we were able to encorporate these themes within our video as the audience were able to identify them.  The feeling of depression was something we didn't exactly mean to put across as it was just supposed to be the characters and artists being trapped, however it does fit into the video well as the artists and characters would be depressed from being trapped and lonlely and so this is something i am happy with having as a piece of feedback. 
For the question 'what is your least favourite part of the video and why?' we had mixed responses from the audience which we were expecting there to be as the video im sure is not everyones cup of tea and these included things like 'when the person walks into the woman, it don't look real'  and from this i have realised from watching back as well that maybe at this point in the video we could have edited it a bit better.  Another comment was 'when they start rapping' and this person themselves listens to pop music and so it is not expected that they enjoy rap music and so i can understad why they wouldn't like this part of the video.  There was a comment which said 'the picture is dark', however we wanted the picture to look dark which is why we edited it intot he video when editing the clips on Sony Vegas as it fits with the theme of being trapped, as you can relate darkness to being trapped.  There was also a few people who commented saying 'the repetitiveness' but when it came to creating our stroyboard and video we were told by teachers and also other students who have done the same, that repeated shots are a good element in a music video a you dont want too much variety amongst the shots as it would not have good continuity.
All of the questionares answered all gave a rating out of 10.  The lowest answeres we got were 6's and the highest we got was one 10.  There were a few 7's, most were 8's and also a few of them were 9's and so i feel that the ratings averaged out to about an 8 as these were the most used ratings.  From these ratings i have learnt that we were able to create a video to a good standard as a school project and that working as a team gained us good feedback as our ideas encorporated together were useful and effective when producing our video.


For my digipack and poster i recieved different types of feedback which enabled me to act upon it and create my ancillary products as best i could with my ideas. 
For the poster i was happy with my potential end result, when a piece of feedback to add something more to it would increase its likabliltiy was to include a barcode which could be scanned by phones which would idealy take the audience to a website of the artist which i feel looked good on the poster and offered more for the audience to get from the poster as it is an advert for the album.
During the procedure of deciding on the text colours for my tracklist it was simply a black or white situation on what looked better and so i asked a few members of the class to decide which looked better and in the end i went with what most of them said which was white and this contrasted the front cover of the CD and i think made it look better as they did too.
A comment i recieved from a member of my target audience said 'the fonts are good for the cover because  they go well with the background', this i agree with as i wanted to choose a font which i think would fit into the theme of the album and artists as a kind of Graffiti type of font witht he edges as a white spray paint effet to emphasise the blackness of the text and after reciveing this feedback i learnt that from the font i chose i was able to edit well to make it fit with the shot i used for the CD case as well  the theme.
Overall from the feedback i recieved i have learnt that from the few crtisisms which i acted upon, i am able to change the conventions of the digipack/poster and make them better for the audiences pleasure.  Also from the positive feedback i have learnt that i am able to use photoshop (for the digipack and poster) to make a good product which i am happy with.

Evaluation Question 2 Final

 How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

To view in a closer and readable distance, right click and open in a new tab and then this enables you to then be able to zoom in on picture.

Evaluation Question 1 Final

Evaluation Question 1 on Prezi

Evaluation - Question 3 Plan

What have you learned from your audience feedback?


In answering this question, I intend to host a 'premiere' of our music video to members of our target audience, and issue a questionnaire to obtain further specific feedback, and add that to the comments already received.
The first pieces of feedback were taken following our pitch to our peers. They liked the name of our band -Perplexa - as they felt it was important to our target audience; 'to perplex' means 'to confuse', so when the target audience was late teens/early 20's, the name Perplexa highlights the confusion of the teenagers in the world, tying in with political matters and the idea that it is hard being a teenager - this was received well with our pitchees. They also approved of our challenging of the convention of flashbacks in our video. As normally flashbacks involve a darker, more abstract effect being applied to them through editing, the idea of changing this in our video to a brighter, lighter effect was met with positive feedback.
My teacher also liked the inspiration we had selected, such as Devlin's 'Community Outcast (for its simplicity, which we particularly tried to emulate) and Eminem's 'Not Afraid' (for the conveyance of its message)
After submitting our draft music video, the feedback received was positive, yet there was much to be improved on. Our teacher advised us to change a number of things, the majority of which we agreed would make a more effective, realistic music video.
We were advised to introduce the artists sooner in the video - an important factor considering this was our band's first single - in order for the audience to identify with them as early as possible.
Our teacher's main criticism was that the narrative of the draft didn't convey our targeted  theme of loneliness effectively enough. To address this, we changed our video to predominantly performance. Instead of the narrative being the main body of our video, it became supporting subplots in order to help display the theme. We felt this worked well, as it minimised the need for a secure narrative, and shifted the focus on the performance of our artists, which our teachers said was very good (especially the rapper). In doing this it made our video less of a story, and more of a music video - which is, after all, the task we needed to execute.
We were also advised to include more footage of the rappers performance, as our teacher said this was the best part of the video. He commented the the montage idea which took up some of the rapper's verse was good, but shouldn't be used at the expense of him. To address this, we moved the montage to later in the video, thus minimising the space it took up on the video, and added more footage of the rapper, this time using a new location. Performance using multiple locations is something used in many music videos, and so us making this change also made our music video much more suited to being a music video.
The new locations used in our final video were also much more bleak than the ones used previously (which our teacher commented were a bit too 'leafy'). The increased bleakness helped convey the mood of our video more effectively, as it meant much more of the city was seen, and the negative feel of it was emphasised.
Another piece of advice given was to use more close-ups to show more emotion in our characters' and artists' faces. We acted on this by adding more of them to the second half of the video.
Our teacher said that the flashbacks in the draft music video ruined the tone of the video as they were too jovial and happy. We addressed this by replacing the flashback with more of the rapper. This in a way 'killed two birds with one stone'; more of the rapper was included, and the negative tone was maintained by losing the happy parts.
The influence of the exam board also affected a large part of our production. Our teacher advised us not to include the homeless man in our video, on the basis that the exam board sees so many videos featuring the homeless and they see it as an unoriginal idea. Therefore, we removed it from our final cut.

Evaluation Planning Question 4

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

There was a wide variety of different technologies i used during the construction of both my music vieo and ancillary products.

For the music video research we the main piece of technology we used, for almost everything else as well, was a computer. I looked at many different music videos on Youtube to get different ideas for shots and camera angles and any we thought were good we would take a note of and try and emulate this in our own way in our video.
For our pitch we used animoto which enabled us to put in short texts and pictures to sum up our ideas for different things in the video including costume and locationing to give the audience basic ideas of what our video will include.
We also set up a twitter account for our artists which we tweeted on how the artists were doing in the production of the video and did this a few times every week so that pur followers could keep up to date with the artists.
For the filming of our video we used a dvd camcorder which put the video straight onto a disknand so it was easy to transfer onto a computer when we wanted to edit as there was no cables required and so it was a quick and easy process.
Tne way in which each of these technologies all fit together is that the websites used were on the computer and on the internet which all are sub technologies of the computer And the cameras disc was transferred onto the computer.

For the digipack i used a Canon 450d SLR camera for all of my photos which i was easily able to transfer to a computer as it had an SD card in it which i was able to put into my laptop and copy over the pictures.
With the pictures on my laptop, to be able to use them to edit at school i emailed them from my home email to my school email which was a simple process and took little time to do.
The main piece of technology i used was photoshop for my poster and digipack in which i was able to edit and enhance the photos and fit them onto a digipack template which i downloaded from a link from a teachers blog.
Another website i used was dafont.com which is where i got the font for my album name, artist name and tracklist to show continuity throughout the digipack and poster, the font was called 'Sketchy' and i used a word document to save it into when i needed it again for the poster.
After i had finished my digipack and poster i used a printer to print them off which was located in the library of the school.
For all of the research, production and evaluation stages i used blogger tonpost about how i was getting on and any ideas we had we wold post on blogger.

Evaluation Planning Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For our music video we have recieved a variety of feedback from both friends and teachers to help influence us on how we came to our final video as well as feedback on our final video.
As we were in the procedure of creating our storyboard we had influences from a few people which gave us ideas on some of the shots and locations to use in our video.  This enabled us to have a wider variety of locations and shots to make the video better and intrgue the audience more, including the idea of the flashback in or draft video.
However when it came to the feedback of our draft video we were given feedback from various people who said between them that the flashback idea did not really work in the video as they could not understand it was even a flashback rather than just other shots of people in the video who they had seen earlier on and so we decided to act upon this and take out the flashback shots and replace them with other shots including more perforance shots and location shots which we felt did make the video better in the end.  This was important because if we werent given this feedback we would have probably left in the flashbacks and this would have effected how well our video would have done in the end result.
Another piece of feedback we recieve from an audiece member was how the performance of Andy's rap should be just Andy performing without any shots of Rakesh or other characters in the video and so we went out and filmed more of Andy performing the rap part of the song and edited this into the video, replacing any shots we needed to take out and a positive bit of feedback we got from doing this was that it looked a whole lot better with more shots of Andy and the editing also was spot on which we were very happy with.
From looking on youtube at comments recieved on the final video, they were simple things including 'good work mate' and 'good video' which we took as positive comments as they obviously are and from this we have learnt that we are able to edit and film well as a team and produce what audiences would consider as a good video' which makes us proud of our work.

For my digipack and poster i recieved also different types of feedback which enabled me to act upon it and create my ancillary products as best i could with my ideas. 
For the poster i was happy with my potential end result, when a piece of feedback to add something more to it would increase its likabliltiy was to include a barcode which could be scanned by phones which would idealy take the audience to a website of the artist which i feel looked good on the poster and offered more for the audience to get from the poster as it is an advert for the album.
During the procedure of deciding on the text colours for my tracklist it was simply a black or white situation on what looked better and so i asked a few members of the class to decide which looked better and in the end i went with what most of them said which was white and this contrasted the front cover of the CD and i think made it look better as they did too.
Overall from the feedback i recieved i have learnt that from the few crtisisms which i acted upon, i am able to change the conventions of both the video and digipack/poster and make them better for the audiences pleasure.  Also from the positive feedback i have learnt that i am able to use photoshop (for the digipack and poster) and Sony Vegas (for the video) to make a good product which i am happy with.

Evaluation Planning Question 1

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

There are many ways in which our music video and my digipack have similar conventions of real media products.
Throughout the video there are various shots used which are used in other music video's, a main one being the opening of the video which has location shots of the city which is also used in video's such as Devlin's Shot Music Ft. Giggs.  The location being Leicester City Centre in our video it is recognisable by people watching as the main audience are people from Leicester areas and so know the places in the city which we have in our video.  As the artists are from Leicester, this gives the video a hometown feel to it as they are within their hometown in the video, and for audiences from Leicester who are watching, they will be brought closer to the artists and be able to feel for them as they could relate to what is going on.  This technique is used in other videos such as another of Devlin's songs, Community Outcast. 
The way the artists are introduced into the video are through a long shot of both artists which then cuts into a mid shot of Andy and immediatly a mid shot of Rakesh, this i feel is a good way of showing the artists to the audience as it is their first song/music video and so it allows the audience to see them early on in long and closer shots to get a good look of what they are about.  This convention is used in Professor Green's single, I Need You Tonight, where we have the artist introduced early on in the video, in the first shot infact, and so the audience again, are able to see the artist and get an impression of him. 
We have included in our video the use of other characters who interact with the main artists only 2 or 3 times in the video and are shown to be trapped and lonely in the city as the artists are and so they can relate to one another within the video as well as with the audience. 
We have the use of rotational shots for each artist throughout the video which show the artists to both be looking around at their surroundings, feeling trapped in the city, and the shot shows the buildings and structures behind them as it follows them around.  This idea we found was useful from Devlin's Runaway as it gets a wider variety of the artists surroundings rather than them just standing somewhere.
We have also included different shots of the artists walking down different streets at different points which gets an even more wider perspective of their surroundings and also the way they walk showing them to be slow.  This is something we didn't really copy from anywhere as we did it anyway but a song which does use this is Eminem's, Not Afraid, in which the artist is walking down a street pavement looking into the distance as we have in our video.
There are also conventions on my digipack/poster which are similar to existing media products.  The basic ones being on the CD cover itself, the title of the album and also artists name which is on many albums by many artists, an example of this would be Eminem's, Curtain Call: The Hits.  I feel this is a good idea as it lets the audience know the name of both the artist and album name and as it is the first album for my artists, it is a must to not just have the album name without the artsist name.  I have also other little basic things such as the barcode which every CD will have, not much more can be said on this except for the fact i have put it in the bottom right hand corner of the back of the CD cover where it looks best.  Also i have on the front of the CD a parental advisory logo, this to let the audience know that there is explicit content on the album, as it is a hip-hop album this could be generalised already with this, however putting this on is a requirement to let the audience know that soe of the songs will have explicit content, and these logos are on many hip-hop albums including all of Eminem's albums. Again, another convention i have which is on every CD i have ever come across and is another must, is the copyright information, including record companies, websites, twitter feed and also the dates to show when it was produced and this again is on every CD. 
For my CD and poster i have used the same picture of the artists standing against the clock tower in the city centre so that it shows continuity from the poster to the CD aswell as from the music video where we have various shots of the artists near or against the clock tower and this makes it recognisable by the audience so that they are familiar with the artists and location (it is reinforcedin their minds). An album which uses a similar convention is Eminem's, The Slim Shady LP which uses the same picture.

Evaluation - Question 4 Plan

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

A fundamental technology I used was Blogger. This allowed each piece of work we completed to be displayed on our blog in post format. The advantages of this site were that it kept our work organised, with each post dated. It also connected me to not only my partner George, but also to my teachers and other groups; I was able to give and receive comments on each post from these people. This feedback was essential to our evaluation and research concerning our audience, therefore it was important for it to be kept safe. Blogger does this, as each comment remains on the blog, minimising the chance of it being lost in the same way as it could be lost in paper form.
Scribd was used in my research and planning stages when posting Microsoft Word documents. The site enabled me to upload my work done in Microsoft Word to the internet, and from there, embed them onto the blog. Examples of my use of this include the Coursework Schedule and Shooting Schedules.
Youtube was my main source of inspiration for music videos. It gave me access to music videos that I could gain inspiration from, and the advantage of this over looking on music channels for videos is that I can revisit the videos whenever I wish. I used it for my analysis of existing music videos in conjuction with the site Tubechop (which enabled me to select small sections of the videos I was analysing, that were useful as evidence for the points I was making.). It was also the site which I used to upload my own videos, such as my Pitch, Animatic, Draft Music Video, and Final Music Video.
My pitch was made using a site called Animoto. This is much like a presentation, however it presents the information in a much more dynamic way. Accompanied with related music to my genre, I was able to use Animoto to convey my pitch in an entertaining, more memorable manner.
Google was the search engine I used to research my inspiration for things such as the bands' costumes and looks. It helped me because I was able to find artists similar to what I thought my band should look like (ie, Andy's resemblance to Eminem). I also used it to find images to help convey my pitch to my peers.
Slideshare was also a site I used. Similar to Scribd, it enabled me to upload Microsoft Powerpoint documents to the internet for use on my blog via embedding. Examples of this can be see in my analysis of digipaks and posters.
My main piece of equipment used was my laptop - it granted me access to the internet at home and at school, without which I wouldn't be able to post my work on the blog. As a portable tool, it was useful as I could take it anywhere and use it when I wished. It was also the computer I edited the music video on.
In addition to this, I had my Blackberry for when my laptop was not at hand. This also connected me to the internet and was able to download/upload things to my blog and see feedback posted on it. It was helpful as it is handheld and linked me to my work at all times. It also connects me to Blackberry Messenger, which was my primary means of communication with George (another user of BBM).
My Blackberry also possessed a Twitter app, with which I was able to maintain our fictitious Twitter feed. This was used to update followers with what the band was up to, thus giving a feel of authenticity to the band.
Our video camera was used to film our footage for the music video. It was simple to use, and filmed onto miniature disks which could be ripped from using a programme on my laptop (bitRipper).
Once the  footage was saved to my laptop, I was able to edit it using the software Sony Vegas Movie Studio. After some practice, I was able to use it efficiently and quickly. Upon completion of the editing, Sony Vegas rendered my music video, making it able to be uploaded to Youtube.
My ancillary products required the use of technologies as well; after research done using Google and Wikipedia, I produced my own digipak and poster. The images were taken using a digital camera, from which they were uploaded to my laptop and school computers via USB cable/memory stick. I then edited the images and produced my digipak and poster using Adobe Photoshop Elements. Due to my experience using this software during the AS course, I was able to quickly apply the skills I had obtained to the task at hand.
As you can see, all my use of technologies have links to other technologies, such is the convergence of software present in the world today. Without this convergence, I would have found the course harder, and work would have taken a lot longer to complete. Due to the importance of technologies, it was vital I became competent in each of them quickly in order to optimise the efficiency of my work on the course.

Evaluation - Question 2 Plan

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancilliary products?

In answering this question, I intend to show the strength of my branding across my products. An important element of this, I think, is the continuity of the 'look' of the band. Throughout my video, digipak and poster (as well as the twitter page) Perplexa are depicted wearing the same clothes and same hairstyles. Therefore, they can be identified easily and helps maintain the theme conveyed by my products.
The theme of the products is epitomised in the album title 'Big City Prison' - the feeling of being trapped in their own home city. It is prevalent in both the video and ancilliary products; the characters and artists in the video are shown, on the most part, alone in an urban environment (direct links with 'Big City Prison'). Similarly, the digipak and poster use settings present in the video (as well as the aforementioned costumes) therefore linking the images on them to the central theme.
The digipak front cover, back cover, and poster all use the same setting and similar positioning (a two-shot) of the artists as that of some of the final shots of the music video, reinforcing the continuity and strengthening the links between the products.
As for the inside of my digipak, a 'split-face' technique is used. The inside left panel uses half of Andy's face, and the inside right uses half of Ricky's. This creates the effect of the artists being 'one' in the form of the band. 'Perplexa'. This togetherness is then juxtaposed in the music video, as the artists are rarely featured alongside each other in it. By contrast, a feeling of loneliness is created, which - because of the togetherness portrayed through the digipak -'hits home' more effectively in the video.

I feel the rapport between the music video and the ancillary products has progressed since the inital draft I produced. Whilst some of the ideas of the digipak have remained from the draft, the execution of them has been developed. I also feel like both my main and ancillary products compliment each other well: the music video brings the images seen on the digipak and poster to life and fleshes them out into a true story. It does this by sharing the elements mentioned above. On the other hand, the digipak and poster sum up the theme of the music video in an easily digestible format, able to be used in advertising the video, and giving the products a 'face' to be identified with.

There is also a uniformity between my poster and digipak - both use the same settings, the artists (obviously) and the same fonts. In a way, the poster looks like a larger version of the digipak, converted into an advertisement.

Of course, there are elements which didn't work, that I chose not to bring forward from the draft ancillary products. The most prominent one was my draft digipak back cover. The idea was to use a long shot of Leicester's signature Clock Tower as it's easily identified by the people of Leicestershire and would therefore appeal to the audience as a sense of pride. However, its surroundings are not ideal for the theme I was aiming to convey in my products. For instance, a building adjacent to the clock tower is very Tudor in its style, which is not in keeping with my 'concrete jungle', 'big city prison' aesthetic.

Evaluation Planning Question 2

 How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

For evaluation question 2 i will be picking out all of the elements i used as well as the elements i did not use, which i feel made my music video and ancillary products effective as a combination. 


The main thing i will be talking about will be the branding throughout all of my products which was conveyed and how it all works well together.  The theme being 'Big City Prison' i will talk about how i have conveyed my artists to be trapped in their life and this is done through the filming and photos for my ancillary products. 
All of the filming for our draft video included 2 main locations which were Leicester city centre with different locations within this location and a friends house which we were using for the flashback shots.  The flashbacks, however, were taken out afterwards as they did not fit well in the video and so we kept the whole of the video in leicester city centre replacing the flashback shots.
After filming the video, i was able to pick out different elements which would look good on the digipack and poster, including the shots i used for the CD cover which was the same as the poster to show continuity between all three (the video, CD cover and poster). 
To show good branding which is the main part of this question, across all of the products, we have been able to do this effectively by having the clothing of the artists kept the same for the video which we filmed on two separate days (three if you inlude the flashback shots which we did not keep).
The elements we used in the video which best represent our artists is the use of rotational shots which we got the idea of from Devlin's music video - Runaway.  We managed to simulate this by simply following the artist as he moved on the spot which is a cheap way of doing it because in the Devlin video they put the camera on a track, making it more steady but we were unable to afford a track and having the camera moving anyway made it look good in the end which i was happy with.  We have both of the artists in the video in multiple rotating shots for good continuity througout the video.  This could be combined with the front cover of the CD as we have both of the artists leaning against the clock tower and the shot used could be looked at in a way as if the camera has been moving around the clock tower and taken a still image of the artists which i think makes a good connection between the video and digipack. 
Another element which i best feel represents the artists is the clothing which is kept the same throughout the whole of the video and fits in with the theme of the music as it shows them as being Hip-Hop artists with the trackies, trainers, T shirts and jackets.  I wanted this to be the same for the digipack so we kept the clothing the same except for one of the artists jackets, this was not intentional however in the end i thought it looked good because even though it didnt show perfect continuity, it still showed off the artists dress sense and still fit the way we wanted him to look.
The element which i feel represents the artists as a whole is their facial expressions which we have kept as serious and mellow to show to the audience that they are not entirely happy with their lives and it fits in with the theme of 'Big city prison' and the feeling of being trapped which isnt going to cause happiness.  Throughout the whole of the video the artists facial expressions do not show any signs of happiness, they show the artists to be serious and somewhat unhappy with whats going on around them, this is continued onto the digipack and poster where we have in all of the camera shots, the artists with straightforward faces which stare directly at the audience and enables the audeince to empathise the artists and get a sense of how they are feeling and could maybe relate to them if they are trapped themselves.  the two shots used for the inside of the digipack i feel best show our artists for who they are, as they are both close ups against a brick wall which shows them to be in a sub urban area in the city and the faces of the artists are again similar to the front cover facial expressions where we have Rakesh on the left with the exact same facial expression as he had on the front cover and Andy on the right, with his head held high and serious face to show him getting through all of his trials and tribulations in life and both of them trying to get on with life and keep it together.

There are some things we decided not to include in both the video and in the digipack.
One thing we decided not to include in the video which we edited out was the whole flashback idea i mentioned aerlier, this was because after we had used it, it did not at all look very good and so taking it out and replacing it with more shots of the artists themselves, made the video a whole lot better, and therefore this wouldnt have been carried over into the digipack as it would only be the artists and location in the digipack anyway.  This having a main location taken out then only left us with the city centre as our main location for the video and Digipack.  I used 3 different locations in the digipack which were all taken from different parts of the video which shows good continuity.  The fountain being the back cover of the CD which is shown in the video with Rakesh and Alex being filmed around it, makes it recognisable when looking at the CD as well as the clock tower where we have the artists singing around it is the Front cover of the CD and the Poster.

Evaluation - Question 1 Plan

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

Throughout our music video, conventions common in existing music videos are used. This begins immediately with some location shots to set the scene of the video and introduce the location. This is also used in several music videos (such as Diddy - Coming Home). Since our location is Leicester, the artist's hometown, we used various landmarks which are easily identified by residents of Leicestershire, in order to give gratification to any audience from Leicester (similar to the techniques used in Empire State of Mind - Jay-Z) This, in turn, brings the artists closer to the audience.
Then, a long shot of the artists, followed by mid-shots of each artist, are used to introduce them. I felt this was important as 'Big City Life' is the artists' first single. We gained inspiration from 'Need You Tonight' (Professor Green's first single) and 'Lose Yourself' (the single that boosted Eminem's popularity). In order for the audience to identify with the artist, I felt it was imperative that they are seen as early as possible in the video, as other music videos have done.
Another element I took inspiration from existing products with is the use of other characters to support the theme of my products of loneliness in their urban environment (hence, the album title 'Big City Prison'). This is used in other videos (like Devlin's 'Runaway'), to help give the video various subplots. Used in combination with the lyrics, they help convey the message we were trying to put across. This also ties in with theories about characters in narratives established by Vladimir Propp. The artists act as narrators through the words they sing/rap, and look upon the storylines of the other characters (myself and Em). There are various examples of this in our own video and, whilst interaction between the artists and the characters is not present in 'Runaway', it is in 'Big City Life' - we have adapted what we learned from our inspiration and incorporated it into our own video. Also, we have Em loosely playing the 'damsel in distress' in our video; whilst not completely sticking to the conventions of this character role, there are some elements of it displayed. Examples of these include where Em's character drops her bag and Ricky helps her pick it up (she gets 'rescued').
'Big City Life' challenges Todorov's theory when it comes to narrative styles. Todorov explains that when it comes to storytelling, equilibriums are disrupted and replaced with new ones. Our video does not perform this. Instead, our video shows various aspects of big city life through the characters actions and the locations they visit, as they are interpretted by the narrating artists. Overall, our video is more of an observation than a story - no equilibriums are changed, which is perhaps more effective when it comes to conveying our video's theme: the idea is that, the city has trapped our characters and made them lonely, the lack of change in the narrative throughout the video establishes this in a way which most music videos do not. There is no 'happy ending' and nothing changes from start to finish. Therefore it challenges the conventions of standard narratives.
Symbolism in our video is also present in 'Big City Life'. It is quite literal, for example when the line 'all lined in a row' is heard, a shot of a queue in a restaurant is shown. Another example is the line 'take a moment to relax, before you do anything rash' is accompanied by a drawn out shot of one of characters stopping for a moment reflectively, and breathing slowly. This example in particular develops conventions seen in existing media. Of course, literal symbolism is no new thing when it comes to music videos (it is featured regularly in Eminem's 'When I'm Gone', where the lyrics are reflected by what is seen in music video) as it is an effective way of getting across messages in the song in a 'double-barrelled' way - the audience sees AND hears the message. What we have done though in the 'take a moment...' shot, is challenged the way shots are performed in music videos; normally in music videos shots are very quick and take up fractions of a second (this can be seen in our very own music video) but for this particular shot we felt it was important to emphasise the message being conveyed by making the shot in excess of 8 seconds long. I felt this fitted in seamlessly with the rest of video and it stands as a memorable part of the music video because of its non-compliance with the general conventions and forms of music videos.