EVALUATION: QUESTION TWO

Both my music video & my ancillary texts are both DISTINCTIVE & UNIQUE in terms of meeting conventions of it's genre.

The images on the ancillary products are similar to each other. I used the same images from the same photo shoot I had with the artist. This means that the poster and the CD  would be recognised to one another because of her attire. Her stances are again similar to her movements in the music video which would again make the audience recognise the artist. These images contradict Laura Mulvey's theory stating that "In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasuring in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects it's fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly". This basically means that women are styled accordingly to fit male pleasures. Eminé Parker being the star of her video does not in anyway have her body dismembered by the camera showing that she is in charge and that she would gain male popularity due to her talent (singing).  

This video shows similar stances and movements that have influenced the poses/stances used for ancillary texts. This would make the audience remember the artists for her personality and body movement aswell as the song and her image.

The use of the image is distinctive and imitates shots from the music video.
Medium shot of artist.

Shots from the music video that influenced the image of the artist in the inside panel.
Medium/close ups and low angle shots.

This type of image is successful in attracting the artists' audience as it is not a typical image of the genre. This means that my artist (Eminé Parker) will be well known for these type of shots and images (shots of her from the side/ from an angle).

Audience:

Eminé Parker's audience would be mainly aged around 13-28 years old. This age range is the main mass market/commercial age range that a pop artist tries to gain sales from. My artist would have a bigger female fan group than male simply because she is a female herself and males tend to lean towards R&B/Rap/Rock/Indie genres. These genres would usually have dismembered shots of females that appeal to a males gaze. Although my artist is a pop artist, she is in the sub genre of pop - r&b. This means that she does have some forms and conventions in both the music video and ancillary texts that would be found in R&B genre. This also means that she would have a small niché of r&b fans that would probably purchase her singles more than the album itself.

definition of Eminé Parker's audience.

Question 4

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

What have i learnt from my audience feedback?

I have learned that audience feedback can be a very important part of creative media as comments and other people's positive opinions can really encourage you and help you improve and perhaps do a better job in the future.

  People's comments can really help you if you agree with them, but i have found that sometimes it is important to stick with your initial ideas if you feel strongly about them.  

when you are in the process of creating a product, comments can help you improve and evaluate it.

I asked a lot of my friends what they liked about my video, the advert and the digipak. They were very postiive and thought my whole media package was very impressive and professional.

Mary, our Media teacher said that one of the strongest points of the video was the mise en scene. Rosetta's image and look were great and she really liked the change of outfits, her hair  and nose ring, gave her an attitude affecting her general performance overall.  She said the direction must have been very very good to get her in the right position with the right look, the style of the outfits were perfectly in keeping with the genre.  She found that the editing was really strong keeping to the beat and absolutely perfect timing.  A lovely range and variety of shots, some good long shots, angles and close-ups as well.

Very positive feedback, I thought!

After taking all my teacher's comments into consideration, i realise that I have learnt an awful lot about how to shoot music videos and edit them hopefully to the standard that  would please my target audience.  I had a great time doing it too,,,,,

Question 3

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








Hardware:

JVC GY-HM100 
I'm really grateful that we were able to use the brand new state of the art video cameras. This camera could achieve an incredible quality of footage, as well as a good light/colour balance.  They gave us the ability to use professional equipment, which lets you learn skills needed in the media profession, for example the camera lets you manually focus as well as auto focusing. It had many advanced features letting us change the way we want to film such as the about of light the camera takes in.  I have seen other colleges use flip HD cameras which are nothing compared to these.
We were given 3 memory cards, 2 of which were 16GB which surprisingly filled up very quickly.  Fortunately, we could delete footage directly from the camera which helped a lot. The final memory card was for our camera to take pictures, and flip hd which we could use to video/photograph us filming with our proper video camera. This allowed us to document our progress and also take photos of our locations.
Spot lights were very useful, although we didn't really need them as we wanted to film during the day.
Our battery was very easy to put in and we were given a spare, just in case one ran out.


Although a tripod is not classed as technology it is a very useful piece of equipment. We didn't need to use it much as we thought a music video shouldn't be static.




Internet for research purposes:


Throughout we looked to the internet for inspiration and research as this technology gives us a wide variety of information. I googled my artist to find her website as well as going on images to find out a bit more about her style and image.


Youtube is one of the most important technologies we had access to during research and planning, as without it we wouldn't have been able to see the original video, or even got ideas from other videos. The suggestion bar on the left hand side of youtube is useful to link to other videos of the same genre and helped us get more ideas.


As well as social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, Wikipedia was a great help in researching our artist's and getting inspiration from webpages pages, to look at their style and compare them. I also found looking at the artist's direct pages to see what influenced them, how they presented themselves and how they portrayed their image to their fans.


Blogger allowed me to update my progression and help store helpful information and make it more accessible and overall was very helpful to doing coursework. Being accessible from a mobile phone it was very useful and i could even look at the blogging checklist and previous student work.


Software: 


Final Cut Pro was an exciting video editing software to use, as it had many features which helped you add effects, transitions, change the video contrast, brightness and overall colour. I particularly liked learning this software.   Below is an example of how we used this to change the video footage to our desired effect.

Original footage (LEFT) - Edited footage (RIGHT)

Original footage (LEFT) - Edited footage (RIGHT)

Video Filter. This is where you change the settings of the effects to give more contrast, less contrast, deeper sharpen, thinner sharpen or focus.

I edited to the beat using the markers you can see below, so it was in synch and on time and I used jump cuts edited to the beat to make it enjoyable and effective to watch.

Adobe Photoshop Elements was the key technology software we used to edit/make our images for our ancillary products. Without the use of this program i don't know how i would have done it.

As you can see from the Before and After pictures above, I used the magic wand tool to cut out the artist Eminé from her background. This image was used for my front cover, with a little help from Photoshop's colour and contrast tools I managed to achieve the black/white/grey effect I was looking for.

Question 2

 How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and  advertisement)?






The video I made with the group plus the advertisement and digipak work very well together as they compliment each other and have clear visual links. 


My audience can easily recognise the font and colour of the text on my advertisement as Eminé Parker's name is the same on the front cover of my digipak. I used the same colour scheme, white and bright pink writing, as well as a dark black/grey theme for the background. This placed more emphasis on the artist's name which dominates. 


The photographic image of the artist is stylish and has a darker moody look similar to other albums I saw during my research. Whilst making my ancillary products, I focused on what I thought people liked and got lots of feedback from my friends. I asked people what they thought about my font and overall I got very positive feedback, so I am happy with the font I chose.

My advertisement photo was taken in Abney Park Cemetery, the same place where part of my video was shot. I also took other pictures there because I wanted the audience to see a clear visual link between my digipak and music video.  Using the same stylish trendy theme, the artist is wearing similar
clothes in the ad and the video. An iconic cross is visible above Eminé in the advert linking to the iconic 
symbolism of the video.


 As you can see from the images below, the same location is used for my advertisement as well as a shot from my video.

We decided to show the artist's face very clearly as a link throughout the products. As she's a new artist, this was very important to draw attention to and advertise her face as well as her name, so that people could connect the two. Throughout the music video we used many close-ups to give her a stronger clearer image. 




If it was up to me I would have shot part of this video at night, but it would have been challenging because of lighting and also getting the group to agree to this idea. I am very happy with the outcome of my video, but that is the only thing i would have changed as the darkness would have given everything a more edgy look and would have made an even better visual reference between my media products.


I think my target audience would be very attracted to my products as everyone who has seen them has liked them and given me very positive feedback. I believe as well as targeting people in my age group, that my media product could be universal, as all age groups seem to like it.  I really enjoyed making them.

Evaluation: Question1.

Ancillary: Final Digipak

Ancillary:Final Poster