Friday, 13 December 2013

Evaluation tasks - Siobhan Sheridan

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


Siobhan q 1 from sbop-media

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




3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?



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

Evaluation Questions

Question 1

Our music video and ancillary texts have similarities and differences with real media products. Our product is similar because it conforms in many ways to Goodwins points of analysis, however our video in particular also challenges several stereotypes and conventions of both music videos in general, but more specifically the pop genre.

Our video and more specifically our digipack conform very strongly in parts to the conventions of the pop genre by having two girls as the focus of the product, despite there being a twist to this the fact still remains that they are the focus of the target audiences attention. You can see this in our video for example in places like this in our video:
-The lighting illuminates the girls faces whilst darkening the background, drawing attention to them.
-The camera is positioned so that the girls appear taller, increasing their stature and their importance to the spectator.



This theme is recurring in both our ancillary texts, we can see the clear focus on the girls in both our digipack and our magazine advert.
-Focus again on illuminating the faces
-Made more evident my medium close up shot
-Costume change with hair styles









Despite this, our product also very strongly challenges gender stereotypes, as in our video we can clearly tell that the girls are the ones in the position of power as the boys are constantly getting injured and failing to catch up with the girls. 
-Here we can see Peter falling over a barrier as he attempts to chase the girls.
-He falls down which is symbolic as his level goes down so does his characters connection with the audience as it is desired to draw a comedy effect from the spectator.



Another way that our video challenges the stereotypes of the pop genre is by doing as is shown above and making the narrative a comedy about two boys chasing after two girls who have snuck out of a dinner party with them, the comedy is exaggerated by having many problems face the two boys as they go. For instance, there is a scene where we use split screen in order to show the chase taking place but confuse the audience by having an extreme close up of both the boys feet and the girls feet but going in different directions
- The use of the same setting with two pairs of feet running shows the close nature of the chase
- Also, by not changing the lighting, we can emphasise the fact that the scene is taking place late at night






In summary, our video conforms to pop conventions by highlighting the night life and focusing on two girls as the main characters. However at the same time, our video is less serious and is more orientated around comedy, also we have the two boys in the video being made fun of and humiliated which is not a very common feature in pop videos.

Question 2

Our main product (music video) and our ancillary texts (digipack and magazine advert) compliment each other well to create a rounded package for the target genre and audience. This is in the sense that we maintain the same style and image for both so that their is consistency in our final product.



Question 3

Monday, 9 December 2013

Evaluation tasks - Brianna Lewis

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

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


3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?



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

Evaluation Questions

Question 1

I compared our music video "The Saturdays - Lady Killer" to another song produced by The Saturdays called "Disco Love"

Similarities:
- One of the similarities between the two videos is that we used a yellow/golden filter on our video to give a pop sense which is also used on "Disco Love" effectively.


- Another similarity would be that we used medium close up shots of the lip syncing for the two girls in our video which is also used throughout the comparison video
- Furthermore, we changed the location in our video which is similar to the comparison video
- Another similarity I found was that the beginning of the video the song was changed from a gentle intro song to the actual song of the video to give the video a sense of location. Furthermore, our video location was at a dinner table so we used a slow gentle song whereas the video of "Disco Love" used an upbeat song
- The transitions were similar as the quick cut transition the traditional way it was used in "Disco Love" so therefore we did the same to give the video a pop genre.
- We also used props such as lipstick. Props were also used in "Disco Love" such as hair straighteners to give the video a girl pop sense.


Differences:

- However, we used different video effects that are not typically used in pop videos such as split screens, which were used twice in our video to make the video look like a chase scene. This is different in many ways to the conventions of pop videos in that it is uncommon for boys to be shown chasing girls around in the street.












- On the other hand the "Disco Love" music video uses more in depth lighting as they are in a club when filming the footage. Whereas, our footage is filmed outside and in a house so the lighting is different.
- "Disco Love" used tracking shots on the lip syncing parts of the videos, which our group didn't do as we only used medium close ups with a change in angle.
-Also, an original feature in our video was that we chose to shoot the video in some circumstances in a point of view style, we had point of views at the dinner table scene that added a depth to the characters that would not typically be seen in pop. For example the text scene, which is vital for our plot line but would not usually be a feature in a music video.


In conclusion, our video conforms to conventions of real media products as we gave our video a golden filter effect which nicely complimented our lighting which was fairly plain until we edited it. It is due to this that our video corresponds well to real media products. For example, Ellie Goulding uses a golden glowing effect on her 'Lights' Album cover and it is a recurring feature in her products for this line. Similarly our digipack and magazine advert have this theme running through them. However our video also contrasts to the pop genre in that it allows the spectator an insight into the characters by using techniques such as point of view shots amongst other things.

Question 2







Question 4










Question 3