A2 Music Video Evaluation

By Charlotte White

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

Rather than have my A2 media product of a music video challenge real forms and conventions in professional media products, i believe that overall i have used and developed them much more allowing my piece to have many similarities to professional music videos, instead of creating my own type of genre in a music video format.

I have also emphasised the location, artist and emotions of the singers and actors by using the conventions of different types of shots, such as long, medium and close ups much like the music video ‘Broken’ by ‘Lifehouse’. Finally, i have developed the convention of flashbacks in my own music video by making the sections much more obvious with the use of them in black and white.

In my music video i concentrated on the very typical convention of showing my artist performing her music, for example her recording it in a studio. However, i have developed on this idea not only through showing the performer, but adding a narrative story alongside much like the music video ‘About a Girl’ by ‘The Academy Is’. I have also used the music video convention of syncing the words to the movement of the singer’s lips, and whilst i believe that at some points in the video the syncing is spot on there are also sections in which lack behind only slightly. I have also developed the idea of lip syncing to add to another of the conventions of editing to the beat. Whilst i have edited to the beat at many points in the music video i have in some ways challenged this idea through cutting suddenly to another shot in the middle of a word to create a new music video effect.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To get audience feedback for my music video, CD digipack and poster i not only asked my media group and friends for feedback, but looked much more closely at finding out what my target audience thought of it by posting them on internet sites such as, facebook and utube.

Whilst i did receive many positive comments on both my music video and ancillary products, such as how on my album poster i chose and edited the image well, the narrative of the music video fitted the song and the image on the front of the CD cover linked well with the album poster.

When it came down to the audience feedback on my music video many commented on how the lip synchronisation was well placed with the movement of the lips matching the music on most sections. However, one person commented that when in the studio you were unable to see the singers lips meaning they don’t know if the words in which were being synced in were the same as the lyrics from the song. When looking at the music video again this comes across clearly in the studio and if I were to redo the video I would go back and re film with the microphone on a stand or with the singer holding it further away. People also stated that when using the microphone I should have used one with a lead to make it look much more realistic. However, I believe by doing this not only would it distract both the audience and the singer, it would cause a health hazard and enable both the singer and production team to trip over it. One of the members of the target audience also commented on the small and crowded studio which we used in the video stating that the objects in the background distracted the audience’s attention away from the singer. If I was redo my piece and have a budget much like the professionals I would look to film in an actual recording studio, however due to no budget before filming I would clean out the studio to allow no distractions from the singer.

When looking back at the CD digipack much more closely whilst I believe that the images fitted with the type of music and the effect we wanted to give, the editing or lack of it, affects the audience and makes them believe that it was not completely finished. Whilst doing the digipack as a group we wished the image of the rose to be slightly unfocused to suggest that all was not well in both the song and the girls’ life. However, after receiving a comment stating that the image seemed blurry and looking back at it I do not believe we got the effect we wanted. However, through the use of just the rose people have stated that it does catch their attention. I believe that out of my music video and ancillary products the strongest of all the pieces was my album release poster due to nearly all comments made being positive. However, I believe that if I was to redo the poster I look more closely at the writing placement, font and colour as a couple of my target audience commented that at some places, such as the album title, the writing blended into the background and was not easily seen.

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

When it came to the construction and research, planning and evaluation process of our music video and ancillary texts project both as a group and individually we used a range of new and modern media technologies.In terms of research on an individual basis i searched internet sites such as draw pictures, colonel blimp and utube to enable us to find and analyse music videos and understand some conventions in which they used. Also, in terms of research for the ancillary products i searched on google images for both CD covers and album posters to allow myself to see certain aspects which i could take and develop the findings and understand how i could relate to these in my groups own designs.As a group when searching for a song which we could use for our music video we searched the site unsignedartists.com as we had to use a niche or unknown artist, which the site specialised in. Whilst at the beginning of our research we wanted a upbeat song to enable us to use fast past editing, we were unable to find one in which we liked so went for a slower and romantic song.When planning our ancillary products we used Coral Paint and Draw to experiment different effects we could use for both our CD digipack and album release poster to improve our editing skills on photos in which we took. All the research and planning we did over our A2 project was put on blogger.com to enable easy access for the moderators, target audience and organising ourselves, as well as enabling us to have all the information when making our evaluation.

For our construction of our music video we used a range of different media technologies from digital cameras, video cameras to capture shots for both out music video and ancillary products, as well as using imovie on the Mac computers. Through the use of imovie we were able to easily edit the shots together, as well as change aspects such as lighting and colouring. For our ancillary products we also used Coral Paint and Draw to edit the photos in which we took before downloading them onto my blog.Finally for my evaluation i concentrated largely on the computer software, Microsoft PowerPoint to enable not only the information to be given directly to the reader, but also used screen grabs from the music video, CD digipack and album release poster to link the evaluation and the rest of the project together.