Evaluation

By Siham Yusef

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Before embarking on the production of my media product, my group and I conducted a great amount of research on numerous music videos from different genres. This was done in order to understand and identify the conventions of music videos especially music videos from the dance genre and decide which forms and conventions we were going to incorporate and conform to, which we were to subvert and the ones we were going to develop and use as inspiration. One convention that I was adamant on conforming to was the use of both the narrative and the performance throughout the music video. This can be seen in a number of music videos from most of the different genres, for example, Beyonce Irreplaceable from the R&B genre, Kidd Cudi Memories from the dance genre and Drake Find your love from the rap genre. This convention seemed as one of the most important parts of many music videos and so whilst conducting the questionnaire, we included a question regarding what the audience considered the most important aspect of a music video Q8. What is the most appealing part of a music video to you? We found that 35% of the people that completed answered with an aspect that is linked to the narrative. The other 65% mentioned something regarding the performance. This led us onto using both the performance and the narrative convention with our music video. Conversely, a convention of dance music videos is the use of a light and usually cheerful narrative. We decided to have an educational aspect which would subvert this convention due to it being quite heavy in meaning and may be hard viewing. Our narrative is about a young male, who is alienated, bullied and feels alone. This leads our protagonist to turn to a drug dealer as he seeks a different way to fit in with people, however, he starts taking the drugs, is robbed and the drug dealer ends up looking for him and his money. This leads the protagonist to commit suicide at the end of the music video. The narrative on the cause and effects of taking and dealing drugs appealed to us and we believed our target audience would enjoy and understand it, as we live in an urban environment where this a relevant issue. By subverting this convention our music video has uniqueness to it when compared to other real music videos of the same genre. Another convention that we decided to subvert was the use of the male gaze. The feminist Laura Mulvey suggests that looking involves power, specifically the look of men at women, implying that men have power over women. In music videos this is done by using camera angles, shots, costume, juxtaposition and lighting. For example, having promiscuously dressed females further away from the camera than the man and the lighting being slightly darker for her. This is not a convention that is isolated to the dance genre as it is mostly seen in R&B, Rap and Hip Hop music videos. We do not have this convention in our music video as all of our characters are male. We decided to have only male characters because we believe that the target audience will be mostly young males and so it makes it easier to identify with or empathise for the protagonist. After researching music videos that do not include the male gaze, I came across the concept of the female gaze. We also do not use the idea of the female gaze because it does not fit in with our narrative. To represent men or women in an appealing manner would not work as we are trying to educate the audience on the use of drugs and bullying and so to have glamorous males or females would seem out of place and may take away from the educational aspect of the music video.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of the main product and the ancillary texts is effective. The ancillary texts which are the digipak and the poster, have a significant number of similarities with the main product and serves as an introduction to the main character and his story. For the ancillary texts, the main character is directly in the middle of the image either giving direct mode of address or looking away from the camera, in both pictures his facial expression is the same. His expression in the images for the ancillary texts are a representation of what he is going to feel in the music video, he seems angry and frustrated. I believe that this is extremely effective because once the target audience see the image; they will already have an idea of the emotion behind the music video. Another reason why I believe that the ancillary texts are effective in regards to their combination of my main media product is the continuation of the alienation of the protagonist. In the ancillary texts, the main character is standing alone in front of a brick wall, he seems angry but his isolation also seems to make him quite vulnerable. This is a foreshadow for the events that are going to take place in the music video. The alienation is the reason for his vulnerability and both of the concepts are present in the digipak and poster. The blue bag is present in both the ancillary texts and the media products. This too helps continue the theme throughout all of the media products. The blue bag represents the drugs and the struggle he is going through and it also represents the hope for the protagonist to be a part of some sort of unit whether it is with friends or the people he is dealing drugs for and to. The bag being the main focus of the back of the ancillary text informs the audience of its importance. Also the style of our music video is present in the ancillary texts. The colours present in the ancillary texts are there to set the atmosphere, for example, the brown of the brick wall has been edited to seem a bit distorted and blurred out, this may seem confusing or out of place. This is a representation and a continuation of the atmosphere that is set up throughout the music video. The confusion and alienation of the protagonist is present in all of the media products. This style aspect would also make it easier for the audience to identify the digipak in shops and places where there may be a variety of different digipak available.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our target audience are 17-25 year olds mostly boys - who would most likely be in education and therefore would not have a great amount of disposable income. Their favourite music genre would be dance. We conducted a questionnaire before beginning our music video production. This was done in order to ask our target audience what they enjoyed seeing in music videos that have already been produced and also what they would like to see in our music video. We gave out our questionnaire to 20 students from our school that were 17-19. This was due to the difficulty of finding people over the age of 20 in our school and also the unwillingness of the public outside of the school to complete our questionnaire. From the questionnaire we found that our target audience considered the performance an important part of any music video as for question 8, which was What is the most appealing part of a music video to you? We found that 65% mentioned something regarding the performance such as the artist, the dancing, the females and the clothing. We took this information on board and made sure that we included the things we could. For example, the different outfits that the artist is wearing throughout the music video are clothes that the target audience would like and be able to afford and so they would enjoy being able to identify with the artist in that way. However we could not use the female characters in our music video that they asked for, this is because we wanted to make the music video educational and so did not want to take the audiences attention away from the educational aspect by having glamorous females or males. Our question 7 was Does the music video have an affect on how you enjoy the song? 65% of the people who completed our questionnaire said no. This was a problem for us because we wanted the music video to enhance the song and make the audience enjoy it on a different level as they would be seeing the images that narrate the lyrics. Therefore we thought that by having a target audience that seems to consider the music video as an individual concept apart from the song and who do not think the music video enhances the song, it would be more difficult to create a product that they may enjoy. After we completed our music video, we had a presentation and viewings of our music video. We invited individuals between our age range to come and watch the video and give us feedback on it. From these we learnt that the audience enjoyed aspects that we did not think they would but they thought we could improve on aspects which we thought were great. An example of this is the strength that the audience identified, this was the use of filters and transitions. They thought that the transitions and filters improved the storyline and helped them understand the concept. They also told us that they thought that it created the atmosphere and that it added tension to certain scenes. An example was the scene where the performance faded into the narrative, especially when it was a night scene and it faded out. Some people said that they thought we could improve by making the night scenes lighter so that they

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

Whilst filming for our project, I was able to use the flip camera. I began with a very limited amount of knowledge and skill on how to use it and many of the shots that I filmed we did not use because they were not clear or shaky. I have also learnt how to use iMovie HD. I learnt how to add transitions, cut the video, add filters, upload the video and how to speed it up or slow it down. I found that cutting videos and adding effects to them was something that I enjoyed doing and I considered quite easy. However I found it hard to make sure the performer's lip-synching and the lyrics were in time. This took quite a bit of practice as the first few times it was not in time. I have also had the opportunity of using excel during the process of making the media product , this was when my group and I created pie charts for the answers from the questionnaire.