Final Evaluation

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 

Here to start the music video we followed convention by cutting on the beat. This emphasises the music through the visuals drawing attention to both. Its good because it gives the audience something to look at as well as listen to working together in unison.

Here we have followed convention by sticking to the genre characteristics. The pop genre videos tends to be quite abstract, with a storyline with an interesting twist to it. In our case the twist is that the video is i-stop-motion and instead of having real photographs we have photographs cut out, interacting with the animated background creating the 'dreamworld' effect instead of a real life one.

Here this is demonstrating a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. We wanted to have a literal meaning of time passing and what is more literal than a clock. However having her acting as a clock was very fiddly, cutting out each photograph of her separate movements as well as making the numbers of the clock move a little was hard to do but  I think it works well in creating a sense of time and the music video passing.

The lyric mention station so we wanted to follow convention by making the lyrics match but challenge it by not making the match completely obvious, making the audience think a little . We wanted it to look like a train had just gone past and get the hair to that effect, this was harder than first anticipated getting it to look remotely similar but I think the audience will understand as it is repeated. We were considering adding an effect making the lines glow  to make it look like a gust of wind, but then we decided that would ruin the i-stop-motion feel of the video, we didn’t want it to look edited. This is one of the few close ups we have in our film, which caters to the demands of the record label.

I think the chorus works well, despite being repeated because the screen is flipped it does not get boring to watch. If the photograph didn’t disappear into the clouds or the bird didn't appear then I think it would’ve been so interactive. Having our star photographs interact with the background definitely paid off, this is following a more modern convention making the video a whole with the interaction, rather than a simple background and the focus being on just the artist. Not only this but having the word 'fly' being repeated amplifies the meaning, and the visuals do the same by being literal.

This puts emphasis on the word love, obviously being a love heart but it has a twist being drawn almost drawing the audience in because it is more personal. Often in music videos words such as love, have emphasis out on them, so we followed this convention.

Here we have followed convention by not having the focus on the artist. As our artist is known for her music, not her private life it is important to not only focus on her, but also the story line in the music video, putting emphasis on the lyrics as they always strongly relate, something we have done throughout the video. But I think it is still effective as it is still i-stop-motion.

Here more than ever, there is a strong relationship between the lyrics and the visuals.  'Heartbeat'  was the lyric so we took the idea literally, but turned into a drawing theme throughout the end of the music video. I feel this challenges convention as although it focuses around one word, it expands into the line drawing with the heart so it all links, rather than it just being the heartbeat.

This is our magazine advert. As we had followed convention throughout the music video by having the lyrics relate to the visuals and meeting demands of the record label, we wanted to do something different. Following the same idea of 'dreamworld' we made her part of the animation with the hair and the glow, but this is then contrasted by the black strips going across the middle. I feel like challenges convention for this genre as it isn't soft, but the focus is still on Effy White and the promotion of the digipack with the ratings and ways to buy the album/digipack.

This is our digipack, and although not finished we have all the keys concepts on there following convention for example having the artist on the front and back cover, but because of Effy Whites persona her eyes are avoiding the camera but she is still the main focus. We have the track list at the back with the bar codes and companies who helped with the album. It is a shame we couldn't get the digipack finished as i feel now it would've looked really good following the 'dreamworld' note pad theme.

Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Final cut express – Helped us colour correct our film, this was harder than I thought it was going to be because you have to manually correct and when it doesn't go how you want i.e there is still a flash it gets frustrating. It is very fiddly but very effective as although there is still a flash, it is not as noticeable as before. By using the colour palettes and changing the hue, this helped us make the flash as unnoticeable as possible.  Not only this but using in and out pits in final cut express made timing the video incredibly easier, it saved a lot of time. Putting the footage together was easy because we filmed the video in order, although we later realized we missed some of the second verse out, this shouldn’t of happened as we planned the shot list around the song, but now we know we should've added timings.

I enjoyed using i-stop motion as it is very easy to use. The simplicity of the seeing each frame as you take makes it easier to spot shadows and hands whilst filming improving the end result. I like how you can watch you video bit by bit in ISM, what you have just filmed and can see if you need to film anything again, this saved a lot of time as there wasn't a delay. As we filmed our video in two documents, we forgot to manually change the screen settings of one of them like we did the other so sometimes during the video the screen cuts smaller and bigger which is something to improve.  The only problem was the delay of the camera as it kept turning itself off and disconnecting from the programme, so we then had to reconnect to i-stop-motion but that was not the fault of the programme itself.

Before the video I was familiar with program and some of its effects but I learnt a lot experimenting with our digipack images. Using the Brightness and Contrast tool to manually  adjust shadows in order to get the glow effect. The Magnetic Lasso tool was used a lot whilst in the editing process as it picked up the shapes of the image without you being to precise and this saved a lot of time. At the beginning of the A2 course we followed youtube videos to get certain effects and t showed me what photoshop can actually do and how i can get more from it. 

Q4 Media Technologies
by: JessicaEloise

Q4 Media Technologies
by: JessicaEloise