Evaluation Question Four:

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

Evaluation Question Three:

"What have you learned from your audience feedback?"

When Alex and I first began this project at the beginning of the year, we had a different idea to the one we used in the end. For our first idea, we decideed that we needed a questionnaire to ask our audience which ending they would prefer in the video as we could not decide! We put this survey on our blog. Here is a snashot of how it looked:

Here, our entire video relied on the audience feedback. Without their help we would not have been able to complete our video and please the viewers. It was important to get the audience's feedback, as these would be the people who were watching our video and we want the video to be pleasing for them.

As we did not need this Survey in the end, I took it off of my blog.




Another time we used audience feedback was when we produced our first rough cut of the video. We showed our media class and teacher and asked our peers to write down their views and ideas on a piece of paper. We gathered this information and used it to improve our video.







As shown below, I produced a questionnaire that my audience filled in, after watching my music video. The results from this questionnaire are also shown below, along with other techniques I used to monitor my audience feedback.

As I am unable to upload every single questionnaire (there were a lot of them!) I have turned the results into charts that are easy to read and will reflect the effectiveness of our video.

Question 1:

(Scale: 1 - Likely. 5 - Not Likely)

Question 2:

(Scale: 1 - Very Effective. 5 - Not Effective)






Question 3:

Question 4:

I'm sure my audience were just being polite, or were scared that I would bite them, but no one answered question 4, and so I am unable to show any results.

Question 5:

For question 5, I asked my audience to state any further comments they may have. Some suggested that we add TV Channel Logos to the corner of our video, however we decided against this as we did not want to appear biased towards a certain channel (although we would have put it on MTV had we needed to.)

Overall, our group learnt a lot from audience feedback. We found that the audience can be very helpful when producing videos as they allow us to take feedback and edit our product accordingly. Without the feedback, our project would not be half as good as it is now!

Evaluation Question Two:

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

When producing the album cover, I found that I had to check with Alex and Glenn (my group members) to ensure that we were using similar colours, effects and had similar ideas, so that the main product and the ancillary texts worked together. Below are some images of how I made sure that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts were effective.

We first began my researching ideas for the video. This resulted in our story line, song choice and who we would use in the video. Once we knew the genre of our song choice, it was easier for us to determine what the ancillery tasks would look like. We began by filming our video. Once we had all the footage, Alex and I were able to take still shots from the video that we liked and use them in our ancillary tasks. Alex began by taking a still shot of Glenn from the filming we got when Glenn was leaning against a tree. This particular shot was not used in the final cut, however, it is obvious from glenn's positioning, and the clothes he is wearing on the ancillary task, that this shot was from the video.

He turned this image into a magazine advert, as shown below.

Although this is the final image, Alex was unable to use the Album cover as I had not yet completed it. Alex used dark colours and fades on this advert which worked well with the genre of our video. By using an image from the video, the audience are instantly reminded that the two are linked.

This was similar for my Album cover production. I used an image from the filming we made and manipulated it using Photoshop, to produce a CD cover that related completely to the video.

Below is a montage of the video, advert and CD album that shows how effective the combination of our main product and ancillary texts are.

Evaluation Question One:

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

The song we chose to use for our music video falls into the musical genre of "acoustic". This means that all instruments used in the recording of the song are acoustic. For Joshua Radin's song 'Winter' the only instruments used were guitar and vocals, making it fall into the genre of acoustic music. This meant we were unable to produce a fast paced performance video as it clearly would not fit with the tempo of the song. After hours of research, we were able to find ideas that we liked and were able to interpret into our own video.

We also looked at the lyrics of the song and noticed that they resembled a man's thoughts who had lost someone close to him, this allowed us to further our ideas as we knew what we wanted our audience to feel when they listened to the song and saw our video. Here are some of the lyrics that denoted to us the sad feel of the song:

"Your name is the splinter inside me while I wait

And I remember the sound of your November downtown

And I remember the truth

A warm December with you but I don't have to make this mistake

And I don't have to stay this way

If only I would wake."

Using words such as "remember" made it easy for us to analyse and work out the meaning behind the artists words.

After much discussion, we decided that the best storyline for us, would be to have a boy reliving memories from a happier time when he was with his girlfriend. This storyline is similar to "Dreamboy" by Don Broco. Unfortunately, the video does not reflect the image we are going for, and we decided not to take ideas from this, showing how our music video challenges forms and conventions of real media products.

As much as we hoped it would, our music video did not come together straight away, with no inspiration, and we had to find ideas from somewhere... After hours and hours and hours and hours (you get the idea) of looking at and watching YouTube videos, we found a few transitions and effects that could be used in our video. For example, the faded edge around the video when in a memory came from Ellie Goulding's version of "Your Song". The tempo to this track is very slow and relaxing, a lot like the song we would be using in our video. Ellie's video was a great help when it came to inspiration as it offered us many ideas.

Below is an image of a faded shot from Ellie Goulding's video, and an image of our video with the similar effect:

This effect enabled us to portray the feel of a memory. It showed that the boy in the video missed his girlfriend and constantly thinks back to better times. Although the effect we used is similar to current day videos, it also challenges them, by showing happier times and memories, the video is able to challenge other videos that show sadder times. A prime example of this is Jason Derulo's song "What if". This video shows how he could have saved his girlfriends life by rewinding time and not speaking to her for the first time, This video shows happier memories, but the video is always tainted with the sense that he will lose her, or will forget the memory. Our video continues to challenge this, as the audience is unaware of the outcome of the video. Does he find his girlfriend again? Or is she lost for ever?

Storyboard

I know this is a tad late, but here is the storyboard that I drew for the group. This was our original idea, hence the repetition. Looking at it now, we see it is incredibly repetitive and boring. Luckily we were able to see these mistakes whilst editing the video and were able to get some more filming done to make it more interesting for the audience.

Below is the Animatic produced by Alex. This is what we used to structure our video.