Evaluation

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

Our music video uses many different forms and conventions of real media products. The 'General Theory' explains music videos in a certain way. It proposes that the lyrics establish a feeling and a sense of subject rather than a meaning. The tempo of the music often drives the editing. The slow and steady tempo to our song encouraged us to use editing that matched this. The use of shot transitions fading from one to another distinguished time either passing, or going backwards to view the flashbacks. This fits well with conventions of real media products because it followed the slow pace of our song. 

In terms of camera work we followed the conventions of real media products because we used a variety of different shots. We used as many shots as we could as long as they were appropriate. The camera angles we used varied from close-ups to establish emotions of the characters and long-shots to make it clear of the settings to portray the mood of the music video.

This is an example of a close-up of Ally's face in the room by himself. This is to show his lonely, upset emotions. 

This is an example of a long-shot of Ally. We have used this particular shot to show the audience the romantic setting and to allow them to establish this is where him and Shannon have previously been. This emphasises his loneliness without her. 

The lip syncing we used develops real media product conventions because we filmed one particular scene where Ally is lip syncing at all times and we used parts of this scene throughout the whole music video. We spent a large amount of time editing the visuals with the song so the lip syncing was in perfect timing. The scene in which the lip syncing was used was when Ally is sat in a dark room by himself, behind him flashbacks of him and Shannon were shown. This creates a feeling of loneliness and rejection because it looks like he is singing out about his heartbreak but nobody is around to listen or care. Lip syncing is very common and used nearly in every music video around at this present time. For example, when we did research into proffessional music videos (e.g. music videos from 'The Script' and 'You Me At Six') we found it was used in almost all of them.

We followed the genre conventions very carefully throughout our music video. To establish our genre conventions I watched and analysed current 'Alternative Rock' videos by artists such as 'The Fray', 'The Script' and so on. From this, I established certain conventions that were common in these music videos. The costumes that Ally wore included jeans and jackets. This is similar clothing to what the band members were wearing in their music videos. The use of the guitar at the beginning links with 'Alternative Rock' videos because I noticed that performance scenes with emphasis on instruments were often used. We also followed genre conventions because of the message of the song that we have linked with the visuals in the music video. The central messages are heartbreak, sadness and loneliness. This is often used in 'Alternative Rock' songs and music videos. We have made these messages clear through Ally's solo scenes in black-and-white, Ally and Shannon's scenes of them being together using bright lighting (in the same locations as Ally's scenes), Shannon's scene where she clearly rejects a phone call from Ally and the scenes of Ally singing alone with flashbacks of him and Shannon together. The contrast in the lighting of Ally's solo scenes and Ally's scenes with Shannon allows the audience to distinguish the difference in feeling since the time is passed where their relationship has ended. 

This is an example of us using an 'Alternative Rock' genre convention at the beginning of our music video. We organised this shot so the guitar was central so this is what the viewers would concentrate on most, and Ally is above so the audience are introduced to him as a character.

This is an example of a shot of a flashback when Ally and Shannon were together. This shows the bright lighting we have used, to indicate these were happy times for Ally. 

This shows Ally alone, in the same place as the previous shot. The fact that he is alone and it is black-and-white clearly shows the audience his is missing her and feeling rejected.

Our music video challenges real media products through the use of narrative structuring. Many media products follow five main stages: exposition (introduces character and setting), development (storyline is developed and more characters are introduced), complication (an event occurs which will affect characters in the video), climax (tension is at a high, a character will make a decision that will effect the outcome of the story) and resolution (the situation is resolved).  The complication comes into the music video at a very early stage, at the same point as the development. This is when we see Shannon reject Ally's phone call because this is when a new character is introduced and causes trouble for the protagonist character. This also creates a complication for the viewer. We did not include a resolution towards the end of the music video. The main reason for us doing this was to follow the lyrics. The song ends on saying 'When will I be loved?' so this indicates to the viewer that he has still not found happiness. To follow this, so the visuals match the lyrics, Ally was walking away from the camera into the distance from a high-angle shot. This emphasises that he is still lonely and down, so there has been no clear 'resolution'.

In terms of an ancillary tasks, we use conventions of real media products in many ways. For our digipack, the same mise-en-scene of black and white editing is used on every page because this shows the same lonely, isolating feeling throughout. Ally is also wearing the same clothes in every shot on the Digipack, this creates realism for the audience and indicates he is a normal person so the audience can relate to him. The writing all over the Digipack is black. This looked most professional because it was clear and bold, also because the dark writing shows his emotions of rejection and loneliness. 

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary task?

As well as our music video, we also created a Digipack and a poster. For them all to work effectively together, we needed them all to follow the same conventions and characteristics. We also had to make sure they all fit into the same genre to create realism for an audience. According to the hypodermic-syringe theory, an audience will prefer to view our product if it all relates to each other and looks similar. In the Digipack and poster, we have used black-and-white editing throughout. This is to emphasise the mise-en-scene of sadness and rejection.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We gained most of our audience feedback from our questionnaire that we created and from showing people our rough cut. We also gained some feedback on our ancillary tasks from using 'Facebook', a social networking site. Our feedback was based on what we did well and what needed improving. The people that were giving us our feedback were our friends and family. We learnt many things from our feedback such as the out of time lip snycing was very obvious, there was not an obvious feeling of rejection and the writing was not as clear as it should be on the lyrics page of the Digipack. However we also learnt that everything in media is open to an audience's interpretation.

One of the first things that our viewers noticed after showing them our rough cut was that some of the syncing was out of time. This included the lip syncing in the scene where our protagonist character is sat alone in a dark room singing out. This did not look as professional as our music video should look. Another negative feeling about our music video was little concept of rejection. From this we added the phone scene and we filmed more of Ally and Shannon together looking like a couple. The feedback that I received after having a first try at the lyrics page of the Digipack, is that the lyrics were not clear enough on the brick wall. Also, that the red writing didn't fit well with my other products. The red writing may be suggesting something other than sadness and loneliness, it gave the idea of blood and danger. To overcome this I made the writing a larger font and I also made the lyrics black. This way everyone could see the lyrics with no trouble and it was not conveying the wrong type of message to the viewer. A positive I got about the lyrics page on the Digipack was the picture of Ally leaning across the wall linked very well with the music video because his facial expression suggested sadness and the brick wall added an urban feel which worked well in terms of genre conventions.

This is showing the scene where Ally tried to phone Shannon but she threw her phone down. This clearly shows that she does not want to talk to him, so this adds to the theme of rejection.

This is a shot from the scene of Ally alone singing out. We spent a lot of time editing this scene so the lip syncing was perfect.

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

Before we started our music video, we needed to do a wide range of research. We found our song that we used for our music video on the Internet, specifically on the website http://www.unsigned.com/. Once we had picked our song, it was made extremely easy for us to find out the genre also through using digital technology. We used http://www.google.com/ to search our artist, from this we found out what the genre is (Alternative rock) and we found out some background information about our artist 'Erick Baker'. We used http://www.youtube.com/ to search for music videos of the same genre as Erick Baker's music. We did this to establish the genre conventions. This was very important because it is vital that the audience understands the genre for themselves. I analysed music videos by 'You Me At Six' and 'The Script'. From this I established that typically the genre conventions include performance scenes, emphasis on music instruments and men wearing clothes such as jeans and jackets. Through the use of http://www.youtube.com/ I also analysed the music video 'How To Save A Life - The Fray (another alternative rock band) and this gave me many ideas about mise-en-scene in music videos, e.g. dark colours and close-ups of  characters faces to portray emotion. 

After our research was done we were able to start planning our music video. We used 'Microsoft Publisher' to make our storyboard. We made this creative decision because this way we were able to include still images from a digital camera of our locations we were planning to use. This painted a clearer picture in our heads than if we just drew the pictures, it also shows that we could use a range of digital technology. We also used 'Microsoft Publisher' to create all parts of our Digipack and poster. It was made easy for us to insert images from the Internet and our own images. It was also easy to include text and move it around wherever we wanted it to go through the use of text boxes. 

We used the social networking site http://www.facebook.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/ to gain feedback on our rough cut of our music video from our friends and family. This was very useful because we were able to edit our video in terms of what our target audience want. We also used our Questionnaire to get even more feedback from different people so we had a wide range of comments. This helped our final video fit to what our audience wanted the most.

When we had filmed our footage, 'iMovie' helped us in many different ways. It helped us stabilise our shots that we couldn't always hold completely still (e.g the high-angle shots where we balanced the tripod on our chin) and it helped us with shot transitions such as fading from one shot to another. We also added the black and white effect on Ally's solo scenes to create a feeling of sadness and loneliness, as well as added bright lights on the flashback's of him and Shannon to show he was happy in those times. 'iMovie' also allowed us to move clips around easily so we could make the lip sinking as good as possible. This made our editing as effective as it could be.

This is our high angle shot of Ally walking into the distance at the end of the song. We stabilised this shot, so now it is very steady and we can concentrate on his emotions.