Evaluation questions

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

In our media product there are many ways in which we have both conformed to and challenged conventions of real media products. For example, we have challenged the conventions of the main artist looking glamourous as is done by the saturdays. We have done this by making our artist, emma, look like an average everyday person so that the audience can relate more to the artist.
Our video in many ways follows the usual conventions of a music video in that we have a wide variety of shots including many close ups and long shots of the artist. We also have many shots of the main artist dancing which is common of music videos.
Our digipak follows the conventions of a digipak quite well in that we have an image of the artist on the cover along with the artists name and album name in big bold lettering. on the rear of the cover we have the track listings as well as a list of bonus features also. we have included a quote from a review on the cover as well which is common of digipak to increase sales.
Our magazine advert also conform to the conventions of a magazine advert well as it shows an image from the video as well as the artist and album name in bold lettering. We have also included a sale date and the name of the shop where it would be sold.

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

In my opinion the combination of our main product and ancillary products works very well. we have a recurring theme of the use of umbrellas both in our digipak and magazine advert which links in well with one of our strongest scenes in the video of emma with an umbrella. This theme helps to link the 3 products well and effectively promotes our product.
Our magazine advert links well with the video particularly  as the main image of our artist is a screen shot from our video. The combination of our main product and our ancillary texts works well as the ancillary texts both promote the video well and help to give some idea of the quality of the video before it's viewed.
However, our song and video is about a bad day and i fell that our ancillary texts, particularly the digipak, fail to get this message across as neither indicate a bad day.

3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our audience feedback indicated that their was a good link between the lyrics and the visuals throughout the video and that the message we put across in our video was clear. We have also learnt from our feedback that our video was well edited and that our audience particularly liked our split screen effect.
The feedback also indicated that more locations would have improved the video as well as a greater variety of shots, also that as the song was quite fast paced the shot durations should have been shorter to be more in keeping with the song.
From this feedback I have learnt that if I were to make this video again I would have used more shots at a faster pace to keep up with the beat of the song. I would also have used a greater variety of editing techniques to make the video more interesting to the audience.

4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction + research + planning + evaluation stages?

In the construction stage of our project we used HD video cameras to film the video as well as a speaker to play the song as we shot to help with lip syncing and timing. Once filmed we used the program final cut express to edit our video and piece it together. Throughout this editing process we also used the website blogger to blog our progress, we also used this website throughout the research and planning stages by blogging all the different pieces of research and plans we did.
We used the program photoshop in the construction of our digipaks and magazine advert to edit images and create these products by adding text and other images.
we used the powerpoint program to create our pitch for our promotional package in which we pitched the ideas for our products. On top of this we used the program word at various stages to type up various bits of research.
we used the website youtube to watch other music videos in the research stage to gather ideas for our own video and in the evaluation stage to analyse and evaluate other videos.
We also used the program Iphoto to upload images for our products during the construction stage as well as iTunes to listen to our song during the planning stage.