Evaluation Q4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Evaluation Q4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

- Video cameras - allowed me to go home and film there as it was only  a small camera, but it was high res.
- Planning - photoshop. I played around on photoshop until I felt comfortable editing safely. This is better than it would have been before digital technologies were invented - dark room processing would have been much harder, more time consuming and less reliable.
- iMovie - straightforward, easy to use, helpful with effects etc.

In my advanced portfolio production, media technologies were incredibly helpful. My project would have turned out completely differently if I had not used these technologies. For a start, the general use of this blog has helped me greatly throughout the construction, research and planning of the project. The blog helped me keep up to date with my work - it allowed me to present my work in a neat, easy to understand and smart way. I am terrible when it comes to working on paper - I tend to be quite messy and clumsy when it comes to losing things. The blog therefore allowed me to keep everything online - I didn't have bits of paper to lose and I could find everything I possibly needed at the click of a button. Also, during my planning and research stages, I kept having ideas when I was out and about. As I have the internet on my mobile phone, I was able to access my blog via that and add ideas to the blog as they came to me.

The website YouTube helped me immensely during my research stage. As my main product is a music video, I was having to watch various different videos from all different genres to gather different ideas etc for my own product. This gave me an up to date insight to the music industry as youtube is updated regularly. Youtube also allowed me to watch videos previous exam students had created to see the kind of work I was competing against. This was very helpful as it showed me the kind of standards the examiners would be expecting, and gave me something to compare my own work to which is always helpful.

I would have found this product incredibly hard if I hadn't had access to the internet. The internet w
as such a great help, particularly at the start of the project. I was constantly using search engines like Google to find artists personal websites, and I used the images part of the website greatly to find digipack covers and magazine ads other singer-songwriters had previously released. Although I didn't primarily use the internet to gather information on my first ancillary product (my magazine advert), as I was having to buy music related magazines to get a wide range of advertisments and to see whereabouts they were placed in relation to other articles and advertisments in the magazine.

Evaluation Q3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Q3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

My audience feedback helped me a lot to understand what people thought of my products, and it gave me a clear idea of whether it would be successful in the music industry or not. One point that came up a lot was that the idea wasn't as clear as it could have been - although people understood that all products had something to do with sand, a lot of the people I asked to fill in the questionaire didn't understand what relation sand had to do with the song. When making my products, I thought the fact that sand timers were included in the digipack and magazine advert would jog people's minds in to thinking the sand in the music video related to being dragged out of control by the weight of the time, yet for some this was not obvious.

This constructive criticisms would be easy to solve if I were to re-do the project, but I am unable to do anything about this now as I have finished the video. If I were to re-do the project, I would choose to include sand timers in the video possibly surrounding the bath, or falling in the bath along with the sand.

The audience feedback showed the links I made between all three products worked really well - 18 out of 20 people said they understood the links between them, which I find pretty successful. I think if I were to do what I said above, and include sand timers in the video too, the link between the three would be even more evident. I also think that if I included black in the video more than just the black dress, the links would be easier to understand, as the backdrop I used in the photograph for the ancillary products are pitch black.

Evaluation Q2 - How effective is the combination of main product and ancillary texts?

Evaluation Q2 - How effective is the combination of main product and ancillary texts?

The main product I chose to create is a singer-songwriter acoustic music video, with a magazine advert and a digipack cover as the ancillary products. I think altogether these three products work well as a form of advertising together, as the same theme runs throughout (the idea of running out of time - using sand to signify this), and the photographs of the model compared to the video footage of the model are very alike. I particularly dislike forms of advertising when they have no relation together, or no hidden message behind the images.
Many artists use simple ways of advertising that don't involve too much thinking, but look nice all the same. I don't like this at all as it doesn't force the audience to think about what the artist is really saying, particularly in products like music videos where a meaning behind the song is necessary but often quite hard to decipher.

I think if I were to make this project better, I would link all three products together even more, to really make an impact on the audience and force people to link the three items together. As I used a black back-drop in the photographs for the digipack cover and the magazine advert, I think it might have been nice to involve more black in the music video. Although I put the model in a black dress for this very reason, I don't think the music video was as linkable as the other two products that were designed very similarly.

The bathroom I used was quite awkwardly shaped. I think if I found a different, more

atmospherical bathroom the video would be at the same standard as the ancillary products.

Evaluation Q1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

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

During my product research I realised that more mainstream singer-songwriters like James Morrison tend to 'perform' a lot more in their videos when comparing them to more independent singer-songwriters like Laura Marling.

Although more independent artists do tend to use performance in their videos, they tend to portray this performance in a very different way to those like James Morrison for example. More mainstream artists tend to show themselves performing on stage, with a crowd for example, whereas artists like Laura Marling tend to show themselves performing in the comfort of their own home for example - they seem more humble whereas the mainstream artists seem more eager to flaunt their already large fan base.

 As the artist I chose to use, Phoebe Hibbert, isn't already famous, I chose to shoot the video in the style of vidoes made by more independent artists. Laura Marling was a big influence of mine, although her production costs weren't as large as others may be, she made sure she had individual and wacky ideas behind the video to make up for the limited production budget.

As I don't have a large budget, I decided to really think about what the lyrics were putting across, and as you know, I came up with the idea of sand reflecting time (sand timers). I knew I wanted to do something to do with sand, but after my first idea failed (model singing the song with sand constantly falling out of her mouth as if the more she talks/sings, the more time she wastes), I found it hard to think of another idea that I felt would be more successful.

Eventually I came up with my final idea - filling a bath up with sand until my actress' body was completely submerged in sand. I think this is a similar kind of idea to something that Laura Marling would have created - it's quite shocking and would stand out compared to videos of more mainstream singer-songwriters, despite the low budget. In some ways I think artists with low budgets create artistic and eye-catching videos to try and get themselves noticed - more mainstream artists don't feel the need to make themselves noticed as they already have a large fan base.

The one thing I wanted to challenge about the stereotypical 'singer-songwriter' music video was the performance aspect of it, so although my actress was singing/miming the song throughout the video, it looked more like her going over the trail of thoughts on her own rather than trying to influence others with those thoughts, which differs a lot from many other acoustic artists.

Final Audience Feedback

When working out how to recieve my audience feedback I decided it would be best to send out a questionaire for people to fill in - if I did this it would be less hassle for those that were to fill it in and I would find out exactly what I needed to. I gave this questionaire out to 20 people of completely mixed ages, races, sexes and musical tastes. Here are the results:

1. Firstly, do you tend to listen to this type of acoustic music? (I wanted to double check I had asked a wide range of people to fill in the questionaire - if I had just asked people that generally liked the acoustic genre it may have been a slightly biased review of my work.)
Yes - 8
No - 12

2. Did you enjoy the music video despite your usual taste in music? (As Phoebe Hibbert is generally unknown in the music industry as a whole, I was aiming to create an enjoyable music video+ancillary products for all, even those that aren't prone to listening to acoustic music.)
Yes - 14
No - 6

3. Do you think all three products linked well together? (On this question I had left space for any extra comments. I will write these below.)
Yes - 18
No - 2
Any comments? -

• I liked the fact that the three forms of advertising were all based around the same idea. It was obvious as an outsider that they all were related to the theme of sand, though I did not get the purpose behind the sand until it was explained to me, which I think could be improved.
• The idea was good and original but I think the filming could have been better.
• They all worked well together, they made me want to see more of Phoebe's work.

4. If you could change any thing about the advertising of the artist what would it be? (I wanted to really dig deep and find out people's true feelings about my products - I chose not to have a 'I wouldn't change anything' option, as I feel many people would choose this as an easy option! Below are a selected few of the comments people left - I have only included the answers that I felt helpful.)

• As I said before, I didn't really understand the whole sand idea. Although the three worked well together, if you were to re-do the project I'd encourage you to make the whole idea clearer.
• On the digipack cover and the magazine advert, I'd make the egg timer more of a key part as to make the idea easier to understand. I'd also include an egg timer in the video to make a clear link between the three products.
• In the video, the sand could have been made to be more obvious - she could have been swallowed up by it quicker as it took me a while to realise that sand was even going in to the bath. This could have been made more obvious by using better lighting, though.
• I would have been more interested in knowing a bit more about the artist - as she's unknown, I'd like to know a bit more about her, the digipack would have been a good place to include this information, but you only wrote about the songs and videos.

My audience feedback has helped me understand that I should have emphasised the sand idea more than I did. Although the majority of people understood the whole idea, quite a few didn't understand the concept behind it at all, but they did notice the links. If I were to re-do the project I think I would have included egg timers in the video too, to link it to the ancillary products more clearly, and I'd have included other things that show the idea of time (for example, clocks) to really push the idea of running out of time across.

Rough Cut Of Music Video

This is the rough cut of my music video. After watching this over and over, I decided that I don't think the video is interesting enough, and I think the idea is somehow too subtle. After taking these ideas on board, I've decided to do more shooting and film sand falling down the porcelain side of the bath. I'm going to do this from three different distances, so I can add whichever of these in to the video wherever fits best. I'm also going to film sand falling on her feet. Although this seems random, it indicates the idea of the sand/lack of time following her wherever she goes and in a way preventing her from moving around/doing what she ultimately wishes to. I also think it would look really good to have the bath taps pouring out sand. This may be hard to do, but over the next few days I'm going to think of ways to manage this as I think it would be really successful, and make the whole idea of the bath much more meaningful and important.

Diary

Will upload scanned diary soon.
Also, upload story board to this post.