Evaluation

Evaluation
During the process of creating my product I experienced many different issues, first and foremost was deciding on what type of music I was going to base my product around, firstly I decided to go for a strong base line in the hip hop song ‘power’ by Kanye West however it was very hard to create a sense of realism in the mise en scene and still maintain a sufficient storyline. Other avenues were travelled down, comedy and chillout with Jack Johnson but eventually I realised that the one thing I was constantly doing was overcomplicating the song and video, so I made a final choice and began creating my final music video.

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products

I chose to adhere to the forms and conventions of a pop single and the stereotypical ‘innocence’ that some female performers seem to utilize to attract a certain audience in these ‘emotional’ songs, performers like Rihanna have demonstrated how making a public transformation from the young girl to the stunning starlet can negotiate increased support for a musician. You can see the change with these two videos;


It now seems, due in no small part to websites such as youtube.com and dailymotion.com that with the increased viewing figures and living in a society that is challenging the preconceived notions of PC (political correctness), is encouraging female performers to take advantage of their sexuality to sell records. However the singer of this song, Ellie Goulding has taken a much more traditional approach possibly utilizing themes of retro and taking advantage of the song “Your Song” as it already is a much loved classic created by English pop icon Elton John below are links to the original and modern cover.




Ellie Goulding, instead of using short skirts and grand dance routines, has used a style of storytelling creating an intimate and expressive piece of media through the lyrics of the song, the story itself has no real equilibrium or disequilibrium and so therefore doesn’t follow Todorov’s theory of a narrative, and indeed it also doesn’t fully follow Propp’s ideas of a prince/ male protagonist being challenged or rescuing someone or something, indeed this version is written from the point of view of the female singer.
So, when creating my own video I realised it must challenge the modern forms and conventions of a music video as, firstly the song lyrics are emotional instead of the more common modern sexual connotations of music like Katy Perry’s California girls. This can be said to be sighs of post feminism which I should consider in the construction of my own video.
One thing I noted with my classmates videos is the relative lack of camera angles, I therefore tried to include as many as I could using one particular low angle shot of my singer, standing in front of a sunset to create a somewhat ethereal quality and negated any angles that could be said to be examples of the Male Gaze as they would have taken away from the effort taken to stress the uniqueness of this artist as I hoped for her to appear unique and unconventional hoping that the poses of her by a tree and in the sunset could be said to be arbitary signs in pop culture.


And the second reason that I decided to not adhere to the common conventions of a music video was based around the theory that at this moment in time it is very ‘cool’ to be different going to the extremes of flamboyance and isolation these extremes being particularly noticeable in artists such as Lady Gaga who continues to challenge the lines between art and sensational. I decided that basing by video in large open fields was both practical, as I live on a farm and new my sister was well rehearsed with the song and a good actress so that she could play the singer and also took advantage of a particularly good spell of weather that created idyllic scenery to record the video in. In fact if you look at the video I produced and Ellie Goulding’s version similar themes of nature can be seen in both; however I use only one performer in my video which is uncommon in modern music videos with artists wanting to seem popular and active in society, as to attract the most amount of people. One way in which I did remain obedient of current conventions of fashion was the clothing the singer wore, with a fashionable dress and plain shirt that was relatively fashionable paring this with a pair of pink wellie boots which go along with the current ‘festival’ chic. I like to think I juxtapose the rustic, rural setting with a fashionable artist using the mise en scene to support the idea that this singer’s unique.
The inclusion of a number of ‘unattractive’ elements including the damaged gate the singer leans on and the metal box she walks by are uses of semiotics, more specifically semantics as these relatively innocuous items can be said to bring the audience back to earth as they show this idyllic place has still been scared by modernisation, to add to this nostalgic feeling I thought of using the ‘old film’ effect in the scenes on which the character is reflecting.
How effective is the combination of your main product with ancillary texts?
Thanks to the proportion and lesions learned in the ancillary task I realised cohesion and time were the most significant element of any good music video so I needed to create a theme and maintain it, while not over playing it. I created a colour scheme using bright, natural ‘earthy’ colours and they were maintained in all elements of the product with the digipack and poster also having a similar colours scheme. After my preliminary work I realised the theories of Abercrombie were significant to the success of my video as people had to believe it was a real situation not something that has been constructed superficially, I had to manage the Surface Naturalism, as Val Pope would say “make it look real”. While filming I was also taking pictures for my poster and digipack as they would subversively attract the viewer to the album, is this not an example of using the inoculation audience theory as well as an intelligent method of making it easy for the audience to familiarise themselves with my different forms of media.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Having had a particularly hard time with creating an assessable product to offer to my target audience, I realised that the best method of marketing my product was to select a product that in itself was attractive, ‘Your Song’ is very popular to almost all age groups, with older listeners remembering the original sung by Elton John and younger fans supporting Ellie Goulding who is a relatively new musician.
After establishing that my target audience is predominantly female and around the 13-21 year demographic. I had to research what is popular with young women so as to insure that they found the video pleasing; Maslow may have said this would be fulfilling some of their needs on his ‘hierarchy of needs’. During my research I found colour and character to be important elements, so the actress was told to be positive and smile while maintaining a certain poise, while wide shots were used to stress the beauty of the surrounding area, and during the close up shots the camera is situated so that the viewer can still appreciate the nature on show.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
During the research stages the two most easily available means for research were the internet with search engines such as Google and Bing to find information and images, and I also read through many music magazine’s particularly Q which I subscribed to. Websites such as youtube were also very useful for reviewing many music videos.
http://www.youtube.com/


For the construction and editing of my own video I used Adobe Premier Elements editing software mainly Photoshop for the pictures on my digipack and also the digital publishing suit which allowed me to edit my recordings, insuring that the sound and video were synchronised while also allowing me to include transitions such as ‘dip to black’ and ‘adhesive dissolve’ to improve the flow of the piece making my music video attractive and easy to watch. I also used windows paint in the process of editing the images I would use for my digipack, another piece of software used was the Microsoft office applications predominantly Word and Publisher.
I was allocated a new Panasonic HD camera and tripod so that all shots were relatively steady, using portable memory sticks to transfer data from one computer to another. A useful feature of these new cameras is their duel feature as they are a good camera as well as recorder so it could supply both types of visual media.
I attempted to make all data relevant to the lyrics and create an attractive yet feminine product I used consistant pattern of san serif fonts as they support the message that the artist is young and just like everyone else, it is this accessibility that young fans find appealing as they think of the artist as a friend. The below point was suggested to me by a member of a focus group of the songs target audience.
Social networking sites such as facebook were used to gather feedback as well as reviewing blogs that specifically spoke of what I could improve in the creation of my blog and overall coursework, the main blog I studied was 'petesmediablog' that offered constructive comments to improve my work.
http://www.facebook.com/
http://www.blogger.com/
I think including the many different pieces of software that I have utilized as well as insuring, to the best of my ability that the product is attractive to the target audience by incorporating the correct hardware has created a piece of media that is attractive to its target audience and marketable.