What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback was vital for us as it allowed us to develop and adapt our media products. Throughout the whole process we were constantly getting feedback from friends and other members of our target audience. As we were producing our products we always had our target audience in mind, trying to produce the best quality work we could, this was a slight downfall as we were too critical of our work at times which meant we were not working at the pace we should have been. I feel we should have made more ways to show our audience feedback as  we did with producing the evaluation.

This was our unfinished music video as we didn't do a rough cut we were unable to show our target audience the whole thing. There were many issues with our music video that were highlighted be our audience, for example similar clips being too close together, the lighting of clips being too dark and some very bright so it didn't look professional as it gave a very different look.

We learnt a lot from our audience feedback as it allowed us to edit an adapt out music video to fulfil the needs of the target audience.   

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

Our combination of the main product and ancillary texts are very effective. We decided to link them together with the image of an eye. We have predominately used dull tones to portray the feel of the indie pop genre however this is challenged in some aspects in our music video where we have used glitter and bold colour in some clips, this was done to appeal to women as well as men, as you would associate this things with women.

Music video: There is a very vague narrative shown by the protagonist losing the crystal, it goes through her journey though the music video on her search for the crystal. Her journey is shown by ECU's of feet and clips of moving cars, this was done to create a sense of movement.




We used an image of an eye to tie all three pieces together. The eye has no significance to the music video in regards to the lyrics but it has a deeper meaning as we expressed emotion through the editing, by slowing down the clip and reducing the saturation, this gave a mellow sad feeling which closely portrays the xx  







This is the album cover. The eye is clearly the main part which is the give away that shows this is the linking icon between our media products. It has been edited in a way which again gives off the same feel of the xx which here is shown to be gloomy and sad.

 We have used a colour scheme which is dull and gloomy to follow the same trend. we have placed the album cover in the left hand corner as that is the product we are trying to promote.

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

Music video theory

1. Lyrics establish a general feeling/mood/sense of subject rather than a meaning. Meaning is presented more through visuals.
2. Tempo of music drives the editing
3. Genre might be reflected in types of mise-en-scene, themes, performance, camera and editing styles. 
4. Camerawork impacts meaning. Movement, angle and shot distance all play a part in the representation of the artist/band (close-ups dominate).
5. Editing is done in fast cuts, rendering many of the images impossible to grasp on first  viewing, so ensuring multiple viewing. 
6. Digital effects often enhance editing, which manipulates the  original images to offer  different kinds of pleasure for the audience. 

Our music video both challenges and conforms to the conventions of real music videos. The way in which it conforms is by having a series of different sort clips that we have edited together to run parallel to the sound track, we created this by following the framework of the lyrics and picking clips which suited them. We based our music video around the title "Crystallised" with the constant use of sparkles glitter and a crystal it is obvious what we were going for.   

Andrew Goodwin's Theory on the Conventions of Music Videos

"Visuals either illustrate, amplify or contradict the lyrics and music. Genres often have their own music style/iconography. Close-ups should always be included. The artist/ band might want to develop their own star iconography, which becomes their star image. Voyeurism is a common theme within music videos. Intertextual reference are also popular. The female performer is frequently objectified principally for display purposes, often through a combination of camerawork and editing with fragmented body shots emphasising a sexualised treatment of the star."

Album Front cover

We went with the eye to follow the trend with our magazine advert and the music video as it lnked them together well. The front cover contrasts with the back cover as the back is very simple this was done to reflect the xx as a group.

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

Here we are showing how we have edited clips on the mac for the construction of the music video. It shows how we have manipulated the clip to make it fit with the lyrics and genre. This was created by changing the saturation, contrast, brightness and speed of the clip.

Equipment used:

We used a handheld camcorder to capture the clips used for our music video, it was very easy and simple to use but it was only basic. If we were given higher range camera with better quality we would have been able to achieve more in out music video.  

We used iMovie for the actual construction of the music video. iMovie is very complex with many different tools and features. It took a while to know what there was for us to use and how to use it, but we got there in the end. Along to construction process we were discovering new things constantly which allowed us to change and adapt our music video to improve the quality.  

Youtube was a big part of our media coursework as all of our work had to be uploaded to our youtube account for us to be able to put in here on our blogs. It was also incredibly useful when it came to using iMovie and photoshop as we could look for clips that showed us how to use them. For example, we had problems with splitting the clip on iMovie so we typed into youtube, how to split the clip in iMovie and there were several videos to choose from, we also used youtube to explore new things using these softwares that we didnt know before.

We used photoshop to construct our album cover and magazine advert. I really struggled with using photoshop, it was very complex and difficult to use, luckily youtube made it easier to use as we could get step by step guids on how to do things and also the other members of my group were pretty good with this software so i did learn a lot of new skills and tips and have improved on my knowledge of photoshop.   

Last but not least Blogger! This is were we stored all of our information and ideas. It was very simple to use and easy to upload pictures and clips. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obviously with using technology you come across many problems. Some of the problems we came across were, the camera qualitly was not as good as we would have liked, creating the same effect with the different clips throughout the music video to make it look professional, we didnt come across many problems with youtube although some of the time it took a while for our clip to be uploaded, with photoshop i literally had no idea what i was doing so i had many problems with photoshop just trying to do the simplest of things and with blogger i knew what i was doing as we used it before so i was familier with the processes.

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