Evaluation: Question 4

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

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnKeGHjzjrM&feature=youtu.be

Evaluation: Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In order to get audience feedback we sent an email around to people from other media classes in the year below us. By doing this, we knew that we would be asking people from our target audience (teenagers and young adults), as well as being able to get comments on the more technical aspects of our music videos as the responses would be from other media students, who would have studied shot types, lighting etc. 

We got several replies containing both positive and negative points which provided us with a good way to reflect on our video. Some of the feedback which we received for our music video:

1. Overall a great variety of shots, which engages the viewer as it partners with the music perfectly. The use of vivid colours is effective in creating a joyful video, but not too saturated so they do not overpower. Really enjoyable video guys!!

2. I particularly liked the quick change of shots, it kept me entertained as there was constantly something new to focus on. I think the overall storyline is a great idea as it relates to many individuals and their childhood. My only criticism is that the change between the stage performance and the child listening to the music at home was too jittery, therefore resulting in a slightly unrealistic effect. Apart from that small mistake, overall I think it was a very entertaining video with a brilliant storyline.

3. I think that the narrative combined with the performance is good and clear to understand. I also really liked how the music increased as she put on her headphones! To improve, there were a few continuity errors with the drummer whose hat kept changing position and I think you could perhaps try to make the transitions between the performance and the scenes in her bedroom smoother. Great video!

Overall the comments were fairly positive with only a few criticisms coming up. The most common positive points included how clear our story line was to follow. The responses often said that they loved the idea of the performance was a child's imagination and they found this concept clear and easy to understand from the very beginning. They also said that the pace of the music video matched well with the pace of the cuts, which is something which we did a lot of planning and research into before creating our music video. In contrast, common negative comments mentioned the continuity errors with the drummers hat. He moved his hat around and took it off at points while we filmed and as he couldn't hit the fragile cardboard drums during filming incase they broke, there were few shots of him which we were able to use. This meant having to use shots of him where his hat was in different positions. They also said that they thought that there were too many cuts between the narrative and the performance, however we knew that we needed to cut back to the narrative, in order to remind the viewer that they performance was the girls imagination. 


As well as receiving audience feedback from teens, we also got some audience feedback from students lower down in the school (ages 11-14). The most common responses included:

1. I like the increase in volume as she puts on her headphones.

2. I don't like the noise of the air at the beginning. 

3. A bit boring/repetitive. 

4. Good use of two locations.

Although we received quite a few negative comments from the younger years, we still received a few positive ones, the most common being that they liked the increase in volume as the headphones were put on. Problems such as the noise of the air at the beginning could not be solved because there is always background noise when filming with a mic and taking out the sound completely would make the video seem unrealistic as we would not hear her walking around her house as we see her doing so. As our target audience was younger than this age group, we were not too surprised that they thought our video was boring and slightly repetitive as it was aimed to appeal to a different group of people. They also said that we could have tried to incorporate more locations but we thought that this might make the video too confusing as there would be too much going on. Although our video did receive some negative comments, the comments were mostly positive and our video was found, through our audience research, to appeal more to our target audience, making our music video a success.

Evaluation: Question 2

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

Link: https://soundcloud.com/log-city/media-evaluation-podcast

Evaluation: Question 1

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

Link: https://prezi.com/thp0kg39kw6e/in-what-ways-does-your-media-product-use-develop-or-challen/

Ancillary Tasks: Evaluation

How successful is the combination of our ancillary tasks?

I think that our ancillary tasks (the album covers, insides and magazine poster) work very effectively together. 

In order to created them we took shots from the performance scenes of our music video. This meant that they would all have the same levels of lighting and colour as well as all being against a black background so they didn't look to colourful, and so they seemed more like they would have been designed for an indie rock band who stereotypically use darker colours and black and white. This also meant that we would not need to reshoot to get images for our digipack, making our post-production process much quicker. We also decided to use the same image from the front cover of our album case on our magazine advert; as it was made to promote the album it made sense to link them together with the same image. This also conformed to what we found when researching album covers and adverts, as nearly all of the posters we found matched their corresponding album cover.

Where did we get our inspiration from?

When doing our research we found certain aspects of the magazine adverts which we looked at particularly important to include in our own digipack. For example, we found with all of the tour posters that the name of the band was always the biggest piece of text on the poster and it was also always at the top or in the centre of the advert, we found a similar trend on the album covers, so we made sure to include this in our digipack, using the font which The Jacques always show their band name in. 

As well as this, the inside front cover is strongly similar to the front cover of one of the Arctic Monkeys' CDs.

The inside front cover of our digipack.

One of the album covers of the Arctic Monkeys.

We particularly liked how simple the design of this album cover was and we decided to try and create something similar in our digipack. We also incorporated their use of a plain black background with white over it in all of the other parts of our digipack by using our performance shots with a black background and using white text over the top. 

How is our digipack suited to the band The Jacques?

After making our digipack, we feel that it is a good representation of our band The Jacques. It conforms to the conventions of their genre, indie rock, by using darker colours with a black background and white text. We also used a close up shot of the actress representing the lead singer of the band on both the front cover of the album and the magazine advert. This meant that we were promoting the band, by using the people who represented them as the main focus of our digipack, as well as making the album and the poster go together well. The Jacques have an existing album cover which also has a photograph of children on it, so we felt that this would make our album cover look more like it would be an actual album cover of theirs as it has a similar image.

Final Cut: Weekends, The Jacques

Digipack: Magazine Advert