Timed Evaluation

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

Our music video is controversial to many conventions of real media products. Usually there is a link present within the video to the lyrics of the song. Although some actions of the mime are featured in the lyrics, the plot of a mime love story is totally unrelated to the song. This gives a unique twist to our music video that perversely conforms to conventional music video requirements of selling the artist and attracting veiwers.
I feel we develop the idea of a music video being more of a miniature film, a trend that has recently become more well-known and recently appeared in videos for artists such as Lady Gaga and Katy Perry where the central artist is involved with characters with a whole story.


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

our products combined interest the viewer, promote our artist and relate to each other in a way that communicate to the consumer our idea. The theme that is used in all products is Victorian poster art. As our mime character is inspired from the very old art form of street and circus performance, the idea for out magazine advert and digipak is a poster for a Victorian style carnival. I feel this is effective in interesting the viewer as it is unique and unusual, not unlike our central mime character. It is this unique feature that also promotes the artist as he is shown to stand out from other conventional artists that may conform to regular music video ideas.


3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Primarily, I have learnt that originality is never ignored. I also have learnt that colour, texture and feel play a large part in the overall opinion of an audience. Our rough cut was lacking the grainy feel of Victorian artistry, which is our main theme. This impacted on the viewer as the footage was bright and neutral which contrasted greatly with our idea.


4.How did you use new media technologies in the construction, planning and evaluation stages?

As many ideas start out, ours began with pen, paper and a cup of tea. However, the use of a blog as a type of portfolio was used to update ideas, clearly view research and track planning stages. We used Final Cut Express to edit our video and took full use of colour correction and filters in order to achieve a more appropriate feel in our video as opposed to a sunny afternoon, as we aimed to achieve the style of an old, grainy film.
Again, the idea for our magazine advert and digipak started on paper and a quick browse of google images, however, they were both constructed using the program Photoshop. This software was used to construct and edit images. We also use colour overlays, filters and burning and smudging tools to achieve the effect of an aged poster.
The blog was very useful again in that every process was accessible and clearly displayed in order to evaluate.