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?

Ancillary task - digi-pak

Ancillary task - Magazine Advert

Effects used for digi-pak

Feedback on final music video

Positives

• Good editing
• Good lip-syncing
• Good narrative
• Touch of comedy in video
• Good lighting
• Nice handheld shots
• Good use of the split-screen effect
• Good editing - always cut on the beat
• Mise en scene is good - variety of costumes and props used
• The zooming in of the girls 'hiding in the bush' was humorous
• Good use of transitions
• Shadow works well in the lip-syncing footage
• Clothes worked well with the genre
• Variety of shots
• Funny narrative
• Good locations
• Easy to understand - communications between the artists and narrative
• Good cut rate

Negatives

• Acting is not convincing
• Not cutting to the beat
• More colour needed
• Shaky/unsteady camera in some footage
• Some shots a little too long
• Lighting is a bit harsh - could be improved
• Some mistakes in lip-syncing - out of time
• Could have used dialogue at the beginning during intro
• No clear narrative
• Lighting and location for lip-sync could have been more creative
• More performance locations

Ariel Levy: Female Chauvinist Pigs; Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture

Ariel Levy: Female Chauvinist Pigs; Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture

Ariel levy is a woman that believes women are objectified in many ways in the media, changing our opinion of them and accepting it subconsciously.

A fantastic example of what she is talking about, is in the recent video 'Blurred lines' By Robin Thicke.

In the video, the girls pretend to act very dumb, sway and dance around. They are also wearing barely any clothes, while the men are fully dressed. They also follow the men around.
This is giving a representation that women are thoughtless and are inferior to men.
Ariel Levy suggests this influences women to reflect this in fashion and to get attention- either through being a star or just in general.
The men are wearing suits, particularly Pharrell's suit is very loud as it is a shiny material. It shows the men are wearing the top quality clothes because they are seen as rich and 'a pimp'- a stereotype of men who charm many women.
As the video develops, the women are wearing less and less clothing, in the end becoming practically naked.

In this shot, he is holding the girls hair like she is a dog on a lead. This makes her seem like an animal and he is the owner. This kind of representation of women suggests that men 'own' women and he is in control of her.

Also in this shot, the women are positioning themselves in ways that would be considered promiscuous and sexual. By 'grinding' and 'twerking' they are giving off the impression that they are dominated by the men, which is Ariel Levy's point. The men seem to make no effort and pay little attention to the girls, yet they are all over the men, dancing suggestively.

A video that goes against this is Lily Allens new song 'Hard Out Here'. The song describes how it is hard for a woman to make a career in this industry without sexually objectifying herself. The video also mimics Robin Thickes video in a humorous way to show she is against it.

Final music video

Analysis of filming (day two)

On the 11/11/13 we had a second day of filming so that we could re-take some footage that needs improving and to get more of a variety in camera angles and locations.

Firstly, we took four more cuts of the girls lip-syncing as we knew that the battery in the torch had full power. We filmed two low angles from either side of the girls and a close-up of each of them individually. We kept the lighting the same by using the gold cover for the reflector to help fit with our genre. From this, we are then going to cut small clips and spread them about over the footage of the  boys running after the girls. This will keep our audience interested for the duration of the music video as footage of the scenes outside will be separated with the girls lip-syncing. By taking footage of the girls lip-syncing from different angles will make our music video visually interesting for the audience.

We then re-took the footage for the bathroom scene as before it was quite dark and the camera was shaky. After uploading the footage onto the computer, you could really see the improvement in lighting from last time we filmed in comparison to this time. There was also a dramatic improvement in the camera as this time the filming was a lot steadier.

Then we re-filmed a shot for the 'dinner party' scene of the phone as last time the footage we took was not in focus and you were unable to read the texts. We wanted to film the text from Siobhan's point of view and so that the audience are able to see the text coming through. This created some problems as the text did not always come through when we had positioned the camera where we wanted it and when it was in focus although after a few takes we got footage that we were happy with.
We came up with the idea of filming an over the shoulder shot of Peter looking at his watch in order to give the audience another dimension to the scene and allow them to feel as if they are in the environment.

Before heading outside we filmed some footage of the boys coming out of the house from different angles so that we could chose which one works best. This was so that our narrative could flow better and the audience would understand what is happening.

Finally, we went outside to film some more shots for that scene. The plan was that we filmed from some angles which we had not yet used to add variety to our video. After taking some shots from a variety of camera angles we had an idea of taking some hand-held shots. We experimented with hand-held camera and took three main shots. The first was a simple hand-held one whilst running behind the girls. Another was one of the boys turning the camera to face them in order for the audience to see how 'out of breath' they are. And the last one was again the boys chasing after the girls but with a stumble. We chose not to use this last clip as because we were filming when it was dark outside, the footage isn't very clear so the audience would not be able to work out what is happening. By adding some hand-held shots into our music video would help to continue with the humorous part of it.

Overall, we feel our filming went really well as we thought up new ideas on that day which meant we filmed a lot more footage than we had planned. As a result of this, we have more than enough footage that we can add to our music video to make it more visually interesting for our audience.

Stills taken for digi-pak