Evaluation question 4

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

Throughout the making of the advanced portfolio, i used a range of different media technologies. The most useful programme i used was youtube. I used youtube mainly to research different music videos within the rap genre so i got an understanding of what we could do for our music video. Through watching many music videos from a range of rap artists gave us the common codes and conventions of the rap genre which we would include and challenge in our music video. I also used youtube to present some of my work including the ‘securing the rights’ video and the interview with the artist. 

Prezi and scribd were also quite important programmes i used as they were the main way that i presented my research and other pieces of work. 

In order to make the magazine advert, i used photoshop. At first i struggled using this programme as i hadn't really used it before. After a while of watching youtube tutorials, i finally got the hang of it. i made three different adverts and a billboard from using photoshop. 

Final Cut Pro was one of the main and most important programmes i used. I found final cut pro quite confusing, but like photoshop and with help from others i began to understand it more. The music video was made using Final Cut Pro as it more advanced compared to that of imovie which we used to make our preliminary task for the foundation portfolio. 

Finally the most important and most essential programme used the portfolio was Blogger. We each made an individual blog and through a group effort we created a group blog where we would present all of our research, planning etc. 

For the filming of the artist and actresses i used my Canon EOS 550D SLR camera. Using this camera helped achieve the perfect quality for the video. i used was able to test the different types of lighting on the camera, for example, in the original setting the colouring was orangey yellow but in the white fluorescent setting the colouring had a natural but grainy look to it which i liked.

To conclude, using a variety of different forms of media technologies allowed me to successfully research, plan and construct a music video.

Evaluation question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

One of group members took on the role of creating a questionnaire to collect our audience feedback. We received a fair amount of responses and from the feedback the main issues we came across were that people thought the narrative wasn't clear enough and that the music video lacked continuity. We took this on board and filmed more clips of out actresses and included more clips of the artist in the video. 

The questionnaire included questions on whether the audience enjoyed the music video, whether they thought the digipak and advert linked well together and ways in which we can improve. This questionnaire was quite important as not only are we receiving good constructed criticism from our fellow peers, some of the people are part of our target audience which helped us to understand how they were seeing our products, whether or not they like it or not. 

From the questionnaire we learnt that a greater number of people thought that our music video and ancillaries worked well together and there was a clear link between them. Majority saw the link between our products and the rap genre which is what we were trying to make most clearest.

Out of all the questions, question 13 was the most important as it asked the weaknesses people thought we had. This was most relevant as we were able to improve a lot from this. The main weakness brought up was that like before, the narrative wasn't clear enough so we added more shots of our actresses and artist into the video. 

This questionnaire was made quite early on in the course so i think if we had a questionnaire made after every time we made progressed into the products this would've benefitted us quite a lot. 

We also received feedback during class discussions where our peers would watch our music video and give us things to improve on. A lot of them said that some clips didn't really link together and previously we had a shot of Holloway Prison which was a little shaky and was advised to take it out. Another thing the class picked up on was that our video was needed more colour and that having it just black and white was quite boring. From this we came up with the idea of keeping the clips of our actresses in black and white as they are flashbacks and to also show that they were quite dark and and times. We kept the artist in colour to show that is him in the present day but darkened the colour to show that it from the rap genre and that there are dark themes within the lyrics. 

We wanted to include Andrew Goodwins theory of lyrics and visuals in our music video but this is something we had a big issue with at first as we didn't have enough clips. From this we filmed more clips with both actresses, for example the older actress selling drugs and the younger actress being bullied in school. 

Once i had finished the Second magazine advert, i asked the artist what he thought about it, he said he liked the colouring, how he is in colour and the rest in black and white. One thing he asked us to change on the advert and digipak was the spelling of is name, in some cases his name is spelt ‘L.Man’ which is what we had done, but he prefers it spelt ‘L Dot Man’. 

Evaluation question 2

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

All of our products compliment each other by having visual similarities so that the audience can see a clear link. They all include at least one convention of the rap genre. 

The main thing that we kept the same throughout the three products was the colour scheme. The black and white colour schemes mainly appear during the narrative scenes. This colour scheme, suggests there are dark themes within the song, it also represents flashbacks throughout the girls life. The dark colour scheme is also our main link between our products.

I think our ancillary products work well together. As well as the colour scheme being the same, we also used similar fonts as a way of linking our products. The font used for the artists name in the advert has an almost gritty look to it which links back to the grittiness of the video. The font used for the digipak is similar to that of the advert however I like the font used for the digipak as it looks like there is a glitch in the font which could represent the “glitch” in society towards the youth and care system. We decided that we would have parts of our music video in black and white to show it was of the past. The parts that were in colour have been darkened to suit the theme of the lyrics and to also fit the conventions of the rap genre as most rap genre music videos have a dark colour palette.

Before the photo shoot with the artist, I decided to make a billboard using a screenshot from a behind the scenes video. The artist is in fact looking at the building that was once his care home. I wanted the image to be black and white to show that the artist was reflecting his time at the care home.

From our audience feedback, we were told that we needed to add more colour to our products. Therefore we changed the colouring of the digipak slightly so that the products would link more.

Whilst researching existing magazine adverts from artists within the rap genre, I realised that majority of the time, the artists will take up most of the frame and be the main attraction. This is in order for the artist to gain more facial recognition. I decided to challenge these conventions by including a lot more of the background settings. I wanted the artist to be in colour with his surrounding in black and white to show that he had broken free from that bad lifestyle and that he is a different man. This relates back to the music video as we have various scenes of our actress sitting in a park. This can be seen in the digipak as the inside cover features our actress sitting on a park bench.

To conclude, I think our products link together effectively through the use of the dark colour palette, similar fonts and imagery.