Written Evaluation

Farzana Begum

Question 1: In what ways does your short film use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Within my A2 media tasks, I had created a short music video called ’Best thing I never had’ which challenges current conventions of current media products. Even though my video ‘Best thing I never had’ is a short video followed the pattern of including a narrative throughout the video. Because I had a time limit of having the video as a maximum length of 3 and a half minutes I had to make sure that everything in the video had to happen a lot quicker. I also followed and develop the conventions of genre. My genre is a hybrid genre mainly consisting of elements from RnB and Pop. This meant that when producing my media products I had several different forms and conventions that I could consider. This allowed me to challenge certain conventions if they did not appeal to me as I could easily change them due to the other conventions that I had to consider.

Narrative For my music video I used several conventions from the RnB genre. For example a common theme in RnB music video is the use of ‘flash backs’ if it is a narrative or love and heartbreak. I identified this feature and decided it was vita; that I replicated it in my video. The use of the flashbacks through the both artist used in my video made the whole performance aspect more realistic as it appeared through the couples creating the narrative themselves. I used the inspiration from the Raxstar video from their song ‘Jaaneman ’. In this song the flashbacks is similar to the aspects for my video therefore I had used ideas from this video and expanding it on to my own which made it unique and the video their were performance aspects were done in a natural, quiet environment in a household representing the marriage life between the two people who are a couple.

Mise-en-SceneThis makes me go onto another code and convention that I used in my music video, which was ‘Mise-en-Scene’. Mise-en-Scene is extremely important, as without this convention most of the music videos around wouldn’t function in the same way like other professional music videos. One of the elements of mise-en-scene that was important in my music video, was the costume changes. The variety of costumes was important, as they had to be representing the genre clearly. In this case, for one of the sections of my music video my artist was wearing a hot pink and black dress with tight black leggings and blank high heels. In different section, my artist wore something more relaxing as she was with her on-screen boyfriend during the scenes of flashbacks, in which she wore a stripy blue and grey top with blue jeans (in which no shoes were required as she was in her home). In another section of my music video, my artist wore a white top with a pink and white fancy cardigan and white heels. With the colours mainly being pink, blue, white and black, I believe that this contributed to representing the genre as ‘RnB’. Although the colours weren’t ultimately bright colours, this was not needed as the bright colours wouldn’t have suited the theme of the song. I also believe that accessories also contributed to the representation of the video being ‘RnB’, as my artist wore accessories that also made her character more feminine and girl like a necklace, earrings and many more.

The Raxstar ‘Jaaneman’ video also inspired me when deciding on a location for the narrative aspect for my video, as the start of the video there are few short shots that are filmed in the house. This swayed me in choosing to film at my own house as I believe it provided a strong contrast against other locations. The location of the house setting allowed me to film in several interesting rooms within the house that really fitted the lyrics. As there was many shots in my video that I liked as I developed the scenes by filming in different rooms to emphasize the result of visually pleasing background to my shots which kept a clear continuity throughout the video, something that is often found in video in our genre such as Shontelle - Impossible which inspired me in doing a song about heartbreak, as this has an actual meaning to my target audience.

PlanningAlso researching earlier about the conventions of music videos, I wanted to be able to develop and use them in the production of my music video 'Best thing I never had'. To develop most of these convention I did good planning I did this by actually analysing different music videos within my genre or RnB as most videos do this before they go into the recording studio and actually film, therefore I did a lot of planning and research before I actually started recording so we looked at different music video to get an outline as to how they were set out and then when I were ready to plan we created scripts and storyboards as a guide to help us when filming.

One last thing that I also focused on a lot was to make sure that my music video was always to the best of quality. I had to use a limited amount of resources but using our creative ideas we then developed them into the video we believe turned out very successful in the end. However with making my film as near to professional quality as possible, I made sure that Camera shots/angles and sounds were perfect every time.

The use of different shots:- Long shot were you can see the whole body of my artist showing every little detail.Close up were you are focusing on one certain object e.g. Ring.

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

I believe that the combination of my main product and my ancillary task have been both effective and successful because they all have a relationship. Each of my media tasks linked together! I created three different products which included my music video and then did two other tasks which were part of my overall media tasks. The two other products that I created were a DVD/CD cover and a Promotional poster for my CD/DVD cover. While I was creating all of theses products I needed to make sure that they all linked which each other and developed on to the RnB/Pop genre, and that it related back to my music video.

When I started to create my video I needed to create an identification for my music video. To do so I made sure that I used the theme of love and power with black and red backgrounds to represent each other. I used black and red colours because these fit well within the genre to suggest power, love, and strength.

While thinking about how effective my overall main product is (Music Video),I think that the narrative structure really worked well because I followed the theme of other RnB songs which I had researched of the period of time I had to create the music video. I also think that I managed to successfully create a music video that fit well within the RnB genre due to the music, camera shots/angles which I had created and also the costumes especially, as my artist had worn dresses, high heels, make up to make the face stand out and accessories which are part of the codes and conventions of a typical RnB music video.

I linked the colour schemes from my music video into my CD/DVD cover and Promotional Poster in order to continue the theme of the colours that would portray the love/heartbreak theme. I think that promotional poster really created a scene for my music video especially with the photography used which shows the main part of the music video and contains a still of the artist that the video is aimed at. I had also made a tagline at my earlier stages of planning which is “one action can decide how you live your future' which I used on my promotional poster and placed this above the main focus of the main image. This tagline emphasize what my whole music video is about, as my artist makes a choice of living her husband for the better of her future, I feel that my music video is giving out a message to my target audience about life and how love can change how we live for yourself and others. I put this there because from looking at previous promotional posters, it was conventional for the tag lines and the information of the video to be at the above of the poster. I also edited the image to give it a nice broader to make it stand out and look appealing. From also having the broader on the picture I also wanted to make sure that the font and colouring of the font also worked well with the image, to do so I made sure that the title stood out to the audience the most so I used a bold font which the colour was black and used the effects from the program ’Adobe Photoshop’ and give it a 3D look around the text to ensure that the eyes are also drawn to this title as well as the image. I think that my promotional poster is basic but even the basic of promotional posters are still used to advertise CD/DVD covers today, I just made sure that I used the conventions of a promotional poster and used them in a professional high standard. I used similar texts as to what I used on my video review to join the two products together and direct them to Best thing I never had.

I was also asked to create a CD/DVD cover which would accompany my music video. Before I went into actually creating my CD/DVD cover I looked in the well known CD covers by RnB artists such as Rihanna, Jordin Sparks and Taylor Swift to develop and gain an idea as to how to create my own cover and what was the typical layout of a CD/DVD cover with the idea of using graphics, colours and fonts. As I have already made a magazine in last year's piece of coursework, I already had an idea of to what the main conventions were of a CD/DVD cover and how to use them this included Date, Page Numbers, Columns, Images and small printed text. With the use of colours I wanted to make sure that I linked my CD cover back to the two other products that I had made which are my music video and my Promotional Poster by continuing the red, black and white theme that I had used on my other products. On my CD cover I chose to use similar texts that I had used on my promotional poster and also kept the main graphic the same as I thought this was the main point of Best thing I never had. In comparison I feel that it is a combination my main product and ancillary tasks combines in order to grab the attention of the readers.

Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience Feedback is very important as it will enable me to see whether i have been achievable in the making of my music video, cd cover and promotional poster. I got 10 of my friends and family to complete a questionnaire in what they thought about my music video. With my ancillary tasks, I printed off the final piece and asked several people in my class and teachers what they actually thought of these and what could be my possible improvements. From my feedback received I gained positive and negative comments which have therefore enable me to pick up on the weakest areas of my products and where I really need to improve on.

Firstly I got my friends & family to watch my music and to complete a Short Questionnaire on what they actually thought of the video best thing I never had . Having asked several peopled I gained positive and negative comments which helped me to pickup on the parts of my video where I hadn't done the best, so if I was to make a music video again I could use this feedback as a guide. From my questionnaire the results I had gained emphasized that the narrative for my music was clear and understandable as 93% of the people had agreed to it, this shows that the audience clearly understood the concept behind the music video, this shows that I have been successful in the narrative I wished to represent. Another question I had asked was did the costume reflect the genre, the results were clear as my artist had worn what many artist like Rihanna or Jordin sparks may wear, which was heels and jewellery which represented the whole aspect of power in the RnB industry.

As well as creating a questionnaire, I showed my video to a member of classmates, as long with positive feedback, I received some negative feedback to show what I could improve on. One of the quotes were ‘I like the video very much as the narrative was interesting and I could relate to it, however there was not enough shot shows which different camera angles’,, ‘good video, however you could have had some scene with her boyfriend in the present as mainly as of them were flashbacks’ ‘in some scenes the camera was not stable enough, but nice video’ ‘the lighting is too dull in some places’

From the feedback I received from the questionnaires I believe that if I was ever to re-do my music video, I would use a timing schedule to make sure that when filming outside, all of the shows flowed in sync with the use of the natural lighting outside. If doing this for my music video next time I don't think lighting would have been such an issue and would have been less noticeable.

From my audience feedback I also learnt that the music & sound effects were also a key role in a music video, because they helped with the narrative to create suspense and the music & sound effects that I used really fit in well with the RnB genre. One of my friends stated that ‘the start beat at the end of the guy shows that his really upset his wife had left him‘. So from the feedback received from the music and sound effects, I made the right choice as the sound effects fit in with the narrative and a lot of people pointed these out in their questionnaire.

When getting feedback for my promotional poster and cd cover I had asked a question to my audience which was ’do you think my promotional poster and cd cover in proportioning my music video’. I learnt a lot from the feedback as I had a majority of positives, 95% believed it did promote my music video, this shows that I was successful as they believed in linked in together for example, the image for my promotional poster was an image of an ring instead of an image of my artist, this was an key element as the same ring was placed in my music video. Also that the background blended in with the image to make it look effective and eye catching for the target audience. In relation to the cd cover many people had said about the background where it repeated said the song name ‘best thing I never had’ they had said that ‘it was different as they have never seen this before, and look very attractive as I had used red to make it stand out even with the image of the artist on top.

The Results

This shows that I was successful in producing a music video where 95% of my target audience understood the narrative and the meanings behind it. As many of them gave said in my audience feedback that they understood the concept between the two characters in my music video, and many of them could relate to it themselves.

This shows that they understood the genre of my music video through the use of clothing, as many of my target audience have said that they have see this in other RnB music video such as Shontelle – Impossible.

95% of my target audience have said I have been successful in promoting my promotional poster and CD cover for my music video through the use of house plate which was pink/red, white and black which my artist had worn, and I had transformed them colours in my CD cover with the text colour. Also through the images as in my promotional poster I had used an image of an ring, which was the same ring in the music video, this shows the connection between all my tasks.

Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construct, research planning and evaluation stages?

Through the different stages of completing my A2 Media Project, I used various different types of new media technologies. In order to record all the different processes of all the different types of planning and research elements that I have done and to keep a 'diary' of everything that I have been doing I used a blogging website called Blogger (www.blogger.com) From using Blogger it has helped me to focus on the different aspects of producing my three different tasks for my media coursework. From using Blogger it has helped me to develop my skills in providing evidence for all the work that I have done, helped me to improve my writing skills and also add in videos that would be appealing and interesting for the user to watch. I have never made a blog before apart from last years coursework so It has also helped me improve this year and I have also gained new skills, however it is all still a big difference for me but I picked it up very quickly and I could also watch my progression of the course build up on my blog.

The internet and YouTube have also been a very important role in my planning and research as they have allowed me to view many different music video online and I could then give my own feedback and annotate these. With the millions of videos on YouTube it helped me to choose a particular genre of what type of video I was going to make. With also the use of the internet I was able to look for particular things such as current CD/DVD covers and Promotional Posters which helped me also in my planning stages. I also used YouTube to upload any videos that I needed to place on my blog, such as the evaluation videos.

Construction of my music videoI filmed all of the footage for my music video using a Sony camcorder, this camera was really good for filming because I also had a tripod which went with it which helped me to steady our shots with none of them being shaky only if I purposely wanted this. At first I had to get some practice in with how to get our shots perfect with the zooms and the quality of the image but in the end after practicing each shot, they all turned out exactly how we wanted them to.

Once I had got all of my film clips off the camera and onto the Apple Mac I could then start the editing process with the program which was called Final Cut Express. This was completely new software for me and it took me quite a long time go get to grips with just doing the basics on editing. After a few weeks of messing around I finally learnt what I needed to and the editing with the use of video transitions for the sound and adding different colours to the scene worked really well.

Further ConstructionI created both my CD/DVD cover & Promotional Poster on Adobe Photoshop. This is because it was the easiest software to work with as it gave me a profession effect on both of my products. Having been familiar with Adobe Photoshop as I have used this previous for my last years AS coursework I was able to create my ancillary tasks to of a high enough standard in a short amount of time that I had to do them.

Other Programs Used:Here is a list of all of the other programmes that I have used which have helped me to construct my whole project:

PowerPoint - This has helped me to analysis music video when doing my research. I gathered images of the shots and then print screened these and could then post them into my blog. Photoshop - This helped me to get pictures/texts that were used for my ancillary tasks.

Using all of these different programmes they have allowed me to gain a wide variety of different skills that will come in useful now as a media student and in the future.

The Skills I Gained From My Construction

Filming Skills - I had never really filmed anything in such detail before so using the Video Camera helped me to gain great practice with my film especially with creating shots/angles/capturing light and also focusing on the different shots.

Editing Skills - I learnt a lot from the editing packages with the new software I wasn’t familiar with. I also learnt more because this was my own independent work with my partner, decisions were completely down to us and this helped me to communicate more and work on tasks to specific deadlines. I was also set my own tasks which helped me to improve my independence skills.