Marvin's Evaluation

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

1.We feel that our video challenged the regular conventions of a typical indie video as we originally took our idea from lily Allen’s video LDN where it demonstrates a very clear contrast between typical London life and a rose tinted version that shows it as much nicer. We feel that we have created something similar with our video with the trigger for the changes to be this nerdy boy and a hat.

We spoke about a few other ideas before we agreed on the final one but we found flaws and issues with them. We thought the idea we chose was primarily achievable and represented a good visual style with a lot of scope for some adaption.

The way that we have challenged others in this genre is by going with a lighter sided view of life and added some comedy in there also which I feel goes with the type of video we created. In a lot of indie videos you don’t see as much of the artist as you do in our video but we feel it works well because he is telling a story throughout

Also in the digipak we didn’t go with the conventional style of the genre. You can see this as we used bright colours and had smiling shots of the artist in a jokey fashion.

We spent a lot of time researching the genre and products from the genre in order to be prepared before we started our project so that none of our shots or images or anything looked really out of place or unplanned.

We used a mix of generic conventions with our own visual style

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

2.We feel that our video fitted well with our poster and digipak as they all featured the artist heavily. For instance lots of close up shots that are head on except on the poster as we thought that as this is likely to be the first thing released that we should have some mystery to the artist. But we used the same fonts that we feel are bold and yet give the artist a fun image by using bright colours on the font

We kept something in all of our products that binds them all together the hat that I also think is very appropriate to the genre and the image that we are portraying for the artist.

Also by keeping the continuity throughout all the products we are giving a clear visual style to the audience and we feel we have appealed well to the target audience by using typical genre images in some parts.

In the music video we played a lot on the character he was the main focus in all of the tasks we wanted to show his personality and characteristics. We also wanted to show that the band had a fun image that fits with the genre.

We showed this by making our character portray a nerdy kid isn’t very popular or cool. I think this adds to the humour of the band that fits with the genre and the image we were trying to create for the character and the band. Also we used the usual image for the band by using the sort of clothes you would generally expect from the indie genre. For instance the shirt and generally trendy clothes. Also I feel that one of the best things that we use throughout the project is the props. Because by using the hat we have created a visual symbol for the band and character. Which we made sure features in all of our products as we think its something that features in a lot of indie bands and artists. Other props we used were a guitar for the cool kid compared to the ‘guitar hero’ guitar of the nerdy kid to get a subtle contrast which we thought worked well. We considered using the guitar in the digipak but then we revised our ideas and said that it didn’t feature enough in the video compared to the hat also we saw the hat as a switch so when the nerdy kid puts it on he becomes everything he wants to be. We also did comparisons between the car and the moped and the fan mail and the bill. So I think we used props well throughout and it made the contrast effect we were looking for more achievable. In the digigpak we utilised a shot face on with our artist but we caught him off guard we didn’t want him posing for it as we wanted to make our artist look friendly and everything from the project is not on for show as if its just footage and images from normal life for him and we did that in the poster as well. The artist is looking the other way also so it gives a sense of mystery as well which we wanted as it would be some people’s first sight of the artist. But overall we think that there is a clear correlation between all products and the artist comes across as friendly, fun and approachable.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

3.Overall we thought we got good helpful feedback throughout the entire project. We got helpful suggestions such as ‘use more lip syncing’ and ‘use more locations’ so we went and reviewed the footage and comments and decided to act upon these things which we feel has made our product better.

But there were times where we thought the feedback we received was not up to scratch. Such as when peers were reviewing our rough cut one person mentioned we used a lot of lip syncing and at the time we had barely used any. Also someone mentioned that the hat used is irrelevant but then we explained how its part of the artist’s visual style and a signature item from the artist. We also received some verbal feedback regarding other products. Regarding the digipak we received some comments from peers about the institutionalisation that we needed to include such as a record company logo and parental advisory and various others. As for the poster we had some peers saying how we should include some quotes and reviews that would make our product look more official and professional.

We also created feedback from our own group by holding regular production meetings involving everyone from the group

Overall as a group we found the feedback extremely helpful and worthwhile as it helped us improve our projects and in some cases make sure we didn’t forget things.

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

We utilised new media technologies in every aspect of our project except drawing up our storyboards but we still need to get them on the blog.

But the main one that we used to document and collate our ideas is the website blogger. This helped us to get all of our research and ideas in one place. That enabled us to create better work. Also we used it for show casing our final work and evaluations. It was very helpful for when evaluating as you can look at your starting ideas and it helps you to see how you have progressed and it makes it easy to compare ideas.

Another website we used was YouTube as it has an endless amount of music videos to draw inspiration from. Also we used it to research into big bands from that genre to make sure that our video fitted to our target audience. Also it’s able to upload your final piece of work there so that it’s possible to view.

We used the program final cut express for all of the production of our video and commentary. It’s a very useful program as it lets you get to all of the footage that you have collected and cut out bits that you don’t like and edit and play with bits you do so. It gives you a professional look to your footage and gives you the best chance to make something really good. Luckily for us we had were familiar with it so we were able to get straight in with it.

We used Photoshop also to create our digipak and poster. This program we all found frustrating at times as it looks fairly complex and found some symbols and buttons confusing but we spent a lot of time creating them and we think the hard work paid off as we created two products that fitted well with the video and genre.

There was also the equipment we used to get the footage and images so we could use them in the programs mentioned we used a stills camera and a video camera. We found them very easy to use and very efficient in their job.