Keira's Evaluation

Introduction

I made a music video, four panel digipak cover and poster in my group of four. My main contributions were, the filming of the sky which has been colour graded and speeded up as a group in our music video and the filming of the little girl dancing which i did at home in my own time. I also made and filmed some of the signs used in the chorus and we went out as a group to film many of the shots, such as the ones done in the snow. I also took some of the shots of the signs used on the two inside covers of the digipak as well as contributing to making the inside covers, This involved using photoshop to colour grade each picture individually and add the leaf brush effect etc. I also contributed to the editing of the video, such as making the split screens and cutting shots.

Question one

How my music video develops and challenges forms and conventions of a real media text

My music video develops and conforms to the conventions of this indie music video, as it uses different locations shots and narrative similarly to this music video, we also used black and white colour grading in our music video as they have here and matched the pace of the music to the editing of the video. However, our music video also challenges typical conventions as we have not used performance in our video as shown in this kooks video, infact our band isn't shown at all, this gives an element of curiousity to our audience and makes our video unique as lots of different people are used, So the story is quite disjointed and random, however our lyrics match the visuals which is not done in this indie video. Finally i think we have developed typical conventions by using lots of split screens, fast paced editing and bright colour grading. Our ending is also unique as we have zoomed in untill the screen is black, this is relative unique.

How my ancillary texts challenge and develop real media texts

My ancillary tasks are relatively similar to typical digipaks and posters of the indie genre, due to the fact that they tend to all be unique and can be a varity of colours, using either photos, illistations or text. So we could be very experimental as long as we kept a brand image as this is one thing all real media texts seem to have in common. our digipak uses photograghs which have then been edited on photoshop, by colour grading, flipping shots and chaging their size. The photograph used on this cover also uses a similar idea as it has been edited to look pixalated. Our poster also uses the the album cover as its focus point and so it uses the same ideas, fonts, colours etc to the digipak, which creates the brand image, as we can see The Temper Trap has also done here by using photographs which are linked and both use the same sort of shot which have then been edited. They both also use similar colours and the same font.

Question three

Initial audience feedback

Initially, we asked 15 people mostly aroung our own age of both sexes what music they thought was popular at the moment, what they enjoyed listening to and what sort of videos they liked amongst other questions to decide what genre of music we would use. We found 13/15 of our participants rated indie as their favourite genre as well as this being rated as the most popular genre at the minute along with dance. As people around 16-18 dominated our questionnaire, this age became our target audience and we decided on using indie as our genre as our participants said it was popular due to "an increase in gigs and festivals" and we found this could be aimed at both sexes, amongst western culture. Which was ideal for our group. We then asked questions about what colours they associated with their favourite genre and if they could give any examples of music videos that had encouranged them to go out and buy an album or they could watch several times. This then gave us an insight into how important it is to find out what your target audience want from your product, so we asked these questions and used the answers to make our product appeal to it's audience.

Final audience feedback

Once we had done our products we asked our target audience what they thought of them as a whole. Here is an example of what one of my five participants said about our they samusic video, the main positives highlighted about our video were the speeded up editing and colour graded sky scene, split screens and the editing at the end. However, participants highlighted the fact some shots at the beginning are too long and one participant said that there could be more variation in shots. However overall my paricipants agreed my music video was typical of a real product with some impressive elements and that you could tell the genre was indie. So i felt my feedback reflected the product well and shows that we gave our audience something they could recognise and enjoy. It also highlights what could be improved for future reference.

Here is an example of a questionnaire done for the ancillary tasks by one of my participants, all of my participants agreed my poster and digipak had clear information, like real media texts do and they all agreed the products worked. The positives pointed out included; the colour grading and leaf affect. 5/5 agreed the brand image did not need to be made stronger and described it as "bright and quirky" and "a unique, fun, indie style". However all of the participants agreed that the dgipak could of contained more information about the ladel, publisher etc. I feel my feedback is relative to the products and points out the weaknesses and positives well, It has help me learn how i could improve the product and whats worked well for my target audience.