Evaluation A2
- 1. Evaluation By Marcus Chippra
- 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks During the stages of pre-production, our group researched into music videos, particularly one’s similar to the genre of music we chose. We then compared the band’s most popular single/video and discussed how the band promote themselves and their music. Well-known bands tended to have quite an abstract album cover, the risk of having this is minimal as the band are already popular and there’s no need to promote themselves. Instead, we chose to follow the generic conventions of a new band and decided to promote the band’s single and storyline for audience to follow. As the majority of our music video is shot in London and the location ties in with the songs title (In This City) and within certain parts of the lyrics so, we decided to have this as the centre piece of our ancillary task. We also discussed the colour scheme which had to be consistent throughout the ancillary tasks. The colour we chose was purple as we felt that it connoted the eccentric and bright London we know and at the same time, gain attention from potential target audience. The storyline consisted of “Sam” (Nick Smith) in his rural hometown, the journey towards “the city” (London) and Sam meeting his girlfriend in the city whilst enjoying the atmosphere. So as well as having the colour scheme purple and a landscape of London, “Sam”, the main character was added to our ancillary tasks in attempt to promote the main character too. Upon doing this we hope to achieve that the target audience will understand the main conventions of our music video (London and “Sam”).
- 3. What have you learned from your audience feedback? Throughout exhibitions of our music video, we weren’t too sure how we could receive audience feedback, and thought there must be a more effective way of extracting useful feedback than just showing the whole video to the audience in one showing and asking them how they thought we could improve on it. So we came up with the idea of first showing the video in it’s entirety first of all to the audience and just getting a general idea of what they thought of the video and to give it a rating from A – U, kind of how it would be graded by the examiner. We would then show the video to them in three sections individually lasting around 1 minute each approximately and asking them to use the same grading for system for each of the three sections they have viewed. Then using this data, we would draw an average from the differing grades they gave us for each section of the video and the main one where they viewed the whole video in it’s entirety. Mr Titheridge (our media tutor), gave us very honest, constructive criticism about the video and gave us a list on around five things that we could change/get rid of/add on which would boost our grade up to an A. So after we showed it to our teacher, we then needed to branch out with our viewer audience feedback, and so we all decided to bring the Mac book back to our houses individually and show our family and get their opinion on the video and possibly get some more suggestions on how we could improve on it. However, we had no such luck and our parents and siblings struggled to find anything wrong with the video and therefore didn’t offer us anything on how to make it look better. We came across a similar outcome when it came to showing her friends, who we all thought were very, almost too praising of the video, and again, like our parents were unable to give constructive criticism from a technical point of view. In conclusion, we have found that when getting audience feedback (especially if the data you are receiving is going to be important for the end product), it is important to receive feedback from a wide range of people from different backgrounds and age, and also in relation to you i.e. from people you may not know, you might get more honest feedback which will ultimately benefit the video itself.
- 4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? During initial stages of production we used resources such as internet in order to do research into potential target audience and genre. Once production begun, we were given permission to use a HD camera. The camera made a huge difference compared to the camera we used at AS, where we used a regular camera without auto focus or any kind of night vision, it has been the difference between grades even. Putting the camera aside the software that was available on the Mac books provided were invaluable to our success in the end. Final Cut Express could not have been easier to use and from our preliminary task last year we have shown how far we come. Adobe Photoshop and Live Type helped further, and with these we were able to put the much needed ‘Kerrang’ logo on the visuals. The ancillary tasks proved to be quite a challenge and again we stirred away from the norm in the sense that used a solid block colour (purple), throughout as a background adding some continuity. As seen on the second slide of this presentation the front cover promotes Nick the main character and he is centralised with the album cover name, very simple, quirky and effective. I am sure on the shelves of any store similar to HMV etc it would stand out and be related to very easily. “Blogger” itself is a quick and easy way to post our progress and I am sure that this last post will do it justice. Amongst the confusion of USB cables and capturing the footage, which was the only long process, the technology aspect of our project went very smoothly and I was very pleased with how the project went.