Diary Entry #34: Construction - Evaluation Question 4

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

Research and planning – with media, the construction and creation of products is revolved mostly around using the technologies to create an effective product. I had many different uses available to me for my media production. I used a range of different online tools to create my plans and research tasks and make them look effective including Slideshare, Prezi and Final Cut Pro to use to edit videos of research tasks I did and my frame by frame analysis. Because I used these in my previous year at college it was easy to get used to them again and now how to make them function. This made the tasks a lot easier because I knew what I was dealing with and what things I was limited to.

     Construction – the construction involved a lot of Photoshop and final cut pro. Because I am limited to college work as I don’t have the software at home this meant that I had to be specifically useful as I only had a limited amount of time to get my work up to the best possible standard. As a person I am able to quickly get used to technologies that I am not familiar with so this was effective when it came to time management. I was completed before a lot of others. Again, because I used Final Cut a lot in my previous college work I was able to find it really easy to adapt again and find all the effects and tools that I needed. However with Photoshop I found it considerably harder because I don’t use that much at all. This is where it became time consuming. When it came to the digipak I had to use Photoshop because it was the most effective to use for a CD cover but I found it difficult to use as although I’m familiar with a Mac it was difficult to remember the different functions and controls. However I got used to it quickly and completed the digipak as it was needed.

Evaluation – like research and planning it was easy to use a lot of online tools although the difficult thing was finding one suitable for the evaluation questions which made it look right and didn’t limit the post to the amount of detail used. 

Diary Entry #33: Construction - Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Because we only had one chance to film the band, there wasn’t much I could change about the filming. Some of the comments were already noticed by me like some of the shots being blurry and some of the lip syncing being blocked. Other comments to improve were about more variety of shots and colour correction. A couple of comments I was surprised about was that people didn’t seem to understand that the ending of the music video was a dream. Most of the comments were that they liked the fast paced editing of the shots – this was good as the song is quite fast paced and that the narrative works well with the live performance.

From the audience feedback I have learned that I am an effective person when it comes to what people will like and what people won’t like. From my rough cut feedback I was able to cater to the comments of the audience and change the music video to make sure the same mistakes didn’t happen again. Some people said that the music video is very realistic and looks like a genuine one and from this I learned that it is easy to please the audience when it comes to music video.

Diary Entry #32: Construction - Evaluation Question 2

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

Evaluation Question 2 from chloebishop7

Diary Entry #31: Construction - Evaluation Question 1

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

My genre of choice for my music video is rock/hard rock. This was the best genre choice for me because that is the genre I’m into and the genre that I know most about. When planning the music video I had to look at the conventions of a rock music video. Things I discovered about a rock music video is that it usually includes the band and a form of narrative, although sometimes it can just have a band performance like a live performance:



Another convention of rock music video is the narrative, if included, usually represent something meaningful e.g. relationships with a partner/family, inner demons and a personal problems. An example of this would be 

.

Other conventions usually include dark misc-en-scene e.g. dark lighting, costume and band performances in quite deserted areas like a woods or a derelict building 

,

 more specifically a warehouse. The appearance of the band is also important to allow the audience to identify with them. A lot of hard rock/metal bands have tattoos like Oli Sykes in 

My music video has used all of these usual conventions of a rock genre. If I challenged the music conventions it would confuse people as to what genre the video would be about. An example of a music video that challenges the conventions of a rock music video would be 

).

Another example of a challenging of conventions is 

.

An example of a music video without a narrative is

.

My music video keeps all the key conventions as the song is quite dark. I included: dark lighting, a deserted area, dark misc-en-scene, a band performance and a narrative. I could not include tattoos because none of the band have any.

The form of my media piece is music video. With music video you aren’t limited to linear editing. Carol Vernallis’ theory supports this. She said editing in traditional fiction was more frequent in music video including things like wipes and transitions and especially jump cuts, making the narrative quick and short. I decided to keep the form of my music video to allow me to develop my own music video to attract the correct audience. An example of moving images in time with the music is my video. 

In conclusion my music video had used all the forms and conventions and not challenged them at all to keep originality but also with an element of structure.