Evaluation: Question 4

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

Research and planning:

• Google

Pros: Google is a web browser and also a simple search engine that allows people to search for anything they want easily and user generated content (Web 2.0) will appear relating to the searched words.We used Google to search for resources, for example: postmordernism, conventions of the hip-hop genre, genre theories, and potential songs that we could use in our music video. 

Cons: There was too many irrelevant pieces of information and there was no real way to filter out the irrelevant websites. You have to thoroughly go through each website in order to find the information you want and there was no real way to check the reliability or validity of the information so you had to trust on your intuition and the website itself.

• Blogger

Pros: Blogger is a website that allows anyone to write a blog and post it on the internet. We used Blogger to record our progress for our music video and print work. Furthermore, we could put images, videos, PowerPoints and sound files onto our posts so we could have a variety of content. In terms of research and planning, we used Blogger as a basis to record our research of music videos and audience feedback of said products. 

Cons: Blogger is not a good website for beginners, it requires high knowledge of computer science for it to work. Furthermore, it's rather sophisticated for a website for blogging. I would have recommended tumblr because it's much more modern and more suited to beginners. For example, the HTML coding will confuse many beginners who don't know what it is or how it works.

• Facebook 

Pros: Facebook is a free social media website that allows people to connect with others on the internet via messaging, sharing photos or videos and playing games with each other. We also all had Facebook on our mobile phones therefore we could sent instant messages to each other outside of school so we could plan and co-ordinate our ideas more efficiently. We used Facebook to promote our surveys and gather audience feedback. We could also share all our images in one place such as our audience feedback results. 

Cons: Facebook requires internet therefore not everyone could access it 24/7 on their phones. This caused delays between responses and wasted time. Another con would be that Facebook is not available in school and as a result, we couldn't communicate as effectively. 

• YouTube

Pros: Youtube is a free video sharing website that allows users to upload, share and review videos, created by other users (Web 2.0). We mainly used YouTube to research music videos for analysis and reference during our research and planning stage. Another advantage of YouTube is that it's very popular so there are millions of music videos to choose and analyze at our pleasure. Furthermore, YouTube is available on my phone so I could go on it at anytime and research music videos. 

Cons: However my phone screen was too small so I could fully analyze the mise en scene of certain music videos at the time.We also faced a similar problem to Google, in that there was no way to filter out irrelevant videos and therefore we had to rely on our experience and intuition mainly. Also YouTube was not available in school so it caused many delays and meant that we could not get advice on whether the video was optimal.

• Powerpoint

Pros: PowerPoint is a service developed by Microsoft as part of Microsoft Office and is a service used by millions of people. We primarily used PowerPoint to record genre theories such as Andrew Goodwin's Features of Music Videos and Steve Neale. The advantages were that we could easily share it in our group and we could use it as a way to diversify our blog posts. 

Cons: PowerPoint is not a free service and relies on people already having Microsoft Office installed. Other versions of PowerPoint are severely worse.

• Google Drive

Pros: Google Drive is a free service that allows users to freely share media content to other people they choose to share with. Like Facebook, it's an effective way of sharing digital content outside of school. It's fast, simple and easy to use unlike Blogger. We used Google Drive to share our music video, genre theories and audience feedback data. It's also a much better way of sharing digital content than a memory stick or email because it can hold up to 10GB of data for free. 

Cons: It can only 10GB data therefore it has a limited capacity until you have to pay for more so you have to upload wisely. Also it requires people to have Google accounts which was a problem that I had because I had to make one just for this occasion.

• Smartphone

Pros: A smartphone is very useful for communication and going on the internet to use Facebook, Youtube, Blogger, Google Drive etc. We used a smartphone in the research and planning stage to take pictures of our initial ideas of our print work to be used for our audience feedback. I also used my phone to research music videos and print work. Furthermore nearly has a phone so we could communicate as group and share ideas for our music video and print work. 

Cons: Smartphone's quality depends on how much money you have so not everyone in our group had a high quality phone so it performed much slower than someone who had a high quality phone. Also you have to pay to go on the internet and depending on your contract, you may have a certain amount of data to browse the internet with. Also the phone has a limited battery life so we could only communicate for so long until we had to stop.

• Surveymonkey/Strawpoll

Pros: Surveymonkey and Strawpoll are websites that allows users to create surveys for other users to complete. It provides the results in the form of tables and bar charts so it was a quick and easy process to see the data recorded. Also it's very easy for the participants of the survey to use because all you had to do were to click a few buttons and it was done. It's also quite easy to create a survey. We used Surveymonkey and Strawpoll for audience feedback for our inital ideas of a music video and print work. 

Cons: There was a limited amount of questions we could ask in one survey for Surveymonkey before we had to pay. This made it difficult to gather all the answers we needed and therefore our products may have suffered as a result. For Strawpoll, we could only ask one question at a time and the participants needed to perform an anti-bot check beforehand so it caused many complications and delayed progress. 

• onpostmodernism.com

Pros: onpostmordernism is a free website that allows users to research postmodernism and find out examples in the media world. It's fast, easy to use and user-friendly so a beginner could easily go on the website and learn about postmodernism. We used the website to also research postmodernism so that we had a clearer understanding of the topic. As a result, we could record the information we learnt into a PowerPoint. 

Cons: There's alot of unnecessary information and suffered the same problems as Youtube and Google because there was no easy way to find the information we needed. 

Construction

• Cameras

Pros: Cameras are devices that allow people to take pictures or record videos and upload it onto a computer to be edited or shared. We used DSLR cameras to record our music video and take pictures for our print work. We had two cameras in total, not counting the ones we had on our phones so it was relatively easy to film what we needed. The cameras were high quality so the video was nice and clear, similar to how it would be in a real music video. We could change the frame rate and exposure so the quality would be higher. 

Cons: The quality of the camera depends on how much money you have. Whilst the quality was good, it was not the best so it wasn't music video standard. Not everyone knew how to use a camera so the cameramen were restricted to the ones who knew how to use it. Also, trying to do a camera movement such as an arc requires a very steady hand because the camera shaking is almost an inevitability without the equipment to help. The cameras also had a limited battery life so we had to rush some of our filming to get the most out of the day.

• Phone

Pros: Phones have cameras built into them so I used my phone to take pictures for our CD cover, magazine adverts and inserts. We also used our phones as a way to communicate each other to meet up at a certain location to start our filming. 

Cons: Only my phone was good enough and high quality enough to take pictures for our print work. We couldn't use my phone for filming because it was too high quality so the difference would be very noticeable and jarring if we used my phone for filming. Also my phone was limited on battery so I needed to save some of the battery for the rest of the day.

• Premier Pro

Pros: Premier Pro is a service that allows uers to edit videos however they want. We already had prior experience to using Premier Pro so it wasn't as complicated as we expected it to be. We used Premier Pro to edit our music video together and add special effects such as the wipe transition. We could also insert pictures into the clips such as the YouTube overlay that we managed to do in our music video.

Cons: The only problem we had with Premier Pro was that it was not a free service therefore we could only work on the music video in school. 

• Photoshop

Pros: Photoshop is an editing software for images. We used this software to edit our print work such as the CD covers, magazine adverts and inserts. It was very effective and there were a variety of tools to edit our images with such as a colour correction tool, cropping and adding specialized font. 

Cons: Photoshop is not a free software so we ran into the same problem as Premier Pro in that we had to mainly work on our print work in school rather than at home. 

• Blogger

Pros: We used Blogger to record our mid production audience feedback and filming days. There were the same advantages as in the research and planning stage.

Cons: The same problems as before and it was hard to record everything if you fall behind so you would have to rely on your group mates for information. 

• Youtube + Google Drive

Pros: They were good services in enabling us to create and share content courtesy of Web 2.0. We used them to create and share our rough edits of our music video for audience feedback and we could share the results with Google Drive. 

Cons: Whilst we can praise them for their good service, the files we created on YouTube took up alot of space on Google Drive so we were limited in storage space. They also take very long to upload so it was a very slow process that may have caused delays. 

Evaluation

• Blogger

Pros: We used Blogger to answer our evaluation questions, analysis of our audience feedback and update our blogs in general. The same advantages as the research and planning. 

Cons: The same problems as research and planning. Blogger is not very user-friendly. It is by far the least optimal blog website that should be used. Tumblr is a far better website that is much more modern. There were many formatting issues that were not resolved since the last time we used it. 

• YouTube

Pros: We managed to create a YouTube channel to host our music video and audience feedback reaction videos. It is easily accessible for anyone and for viewing for our blogs. We could easily copy and paste the web address and upload it onto our blogs. 

Cons: There were copyright infridgement claims on our music video therefore it made it more difficult for our video to be shared as a result. 

• gifmaker.me

Pros: Gif maker is a website allows anyone to upload a series of pictures or clips (part of Web 2.0) and merge it into a gif format. Gifs are simply the combination of video and pictures into one. It can play up to 10 seconds of videos or images. This also added some creativity and variety of content onto our blogs 

Cons: Gifs are very limited to 10 seconds of video so we couldn't share everything we wanted. Also gif files are quite large and takes up alot of storage therefore it wasn't very efficient for our computers and caused lag. Also when they're uploaded onto our blogs, it takes a few minutes for it to fully load and viewed. 

• Google Drive

Pros: As mentioned before, we could easily share audience feedback files such as results and reaction videos and music video files within our group for evaluation purposes. 

Cons: As mentioned before, limited to 10GB of storage until you have to pay for more. 

Evaluation: Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I believe audience feedback is the quintessential part of making a product because not only does it provide constructive criticism, it also allows the creators to get praise for all their hard work. This is also applicable to the wider music industry because one of their primary goals is to essentially make income and to do that, they need to know what their target audiences like or dislike. Understanding the psychology of their subjects is a key aspect of making a successful product and can be abused as mentioned by the mass society theory. However the Users Gratification Theory suggests that consumers are active and have power over what media they consume. This is reflected and the is the purpose of audience feedback so that larger companies have to cater to people's needs.Audience feedback is also important to the media/music industries because they provide a different perspective and can provide insight on your product that someone who works on the product wouldn't be able to provide. Also artists tend to be biased towards their ideas therefore outside opinions are essential in critiquing the product. Without audience feedback, music companies take a huge risk that will likely end in failure.

Audience feedback is mainly used to improve and provide information about a product through the eyes of a consumer. Based on what audiences say, the music/media industry will make changes to their product that will compliment the feedback. For example, if you were trying to make a new brand of sweets and the consensus of the audience feedback was that you should add more artificial flavours then you should make changes to your sweets that reflect it.

Ignoring audience feedback is a gamble because you're essentially disregarding the demands of your audience and relying on your own intuition and expertise. Most cases of ignoring audience feedback don't end successfully because they don't have an outside opinion to criticize their product however they do attract alot of attention that may or may not be helpful. The consequences are an unsuccessful product, loss in income, damage to your brand and public humiliation.

For us, audience feedback was very useful for optimizing our music video, magazine adverts, CD covers and inserts. The criticism that we got from our mid-production magazine advert feedback such as we should focus on improving editing, colour scheme and font really made a significant difference in our final products.

Compare how our magazine advert previously looked without audience feedback, to how it is now:



As you can see, the criticism we got for our magazine adverts drastically helped us to focus on improving our products. Whilst we were aware that we had weaker elements to our products, we weren't sure which area we needed to focus on. Therefore audience feedback aided us in focusing on specific areas which improved out final product. However we did not agree that font was a huge issue for this specific magazine advert because it was that we didn't have much writing on the magazine advert rather than the font itself being a problem.

For positive feedback, I wasn't necessarily surprised because from the first audience feedback for our print work, our audience were clearly active over what they felt was relevant in today's society, linking to the Users Gratification Theory. 60% of people felt that magazine ads were not relevant in today's society which clearly shows that our consumers are not passive, complying with the theory that consumers have power over what media they consume. Generally I'd say that the positive feedback was incredibly helpful for providing us encouragement that what we were doing was good and helped us perpetuate our success.

Evaluation: Question 2

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

The visual motifs/elements that link our music video/CD cover and adverts are the artist, the setting, the font and the characters. They are prevalent throughout all our products that we have created.

This creates cohesion because you can clearly see how the font appears in both the magazine advert and the CD back cover and two out of the three characters are in all of the three examples above. This is because we wanted our products to share common themes and features so that people can identify our music video from others. It also helps for people to see our brand with the unique font. 

An example of this from ancillary texts is Eminem's Not Afraid:

You can see how Eminem has cohesion throughout his CD cover, magazine advert and the music video because he has similar dark clothing which is a key feature of Eminem as a rapper. He also has the same font in his CD cover and magazine advert because it's unique to his brand and can be easily identified among the thousands of CD covers.

Intertextual references are also a visual motif that link our CD inserts and music video together.



You can see that the Twitter theme is shared in both of these products along with the person in the CD inserts is shown in the phone. Postmodernism has been one of our highest priorities in making our products and we believed intertextual references were the best way to be postmodern and for it to be immediately identified. This makes our products cohesive because common traits are what cohesion is all about and the use of technology and intertextual references were a key trait in our products.

An example of this from ancillary texts is Imagine Dragons' Warriors:'



In both the music video and the CD cover, they make intertextual references to the game 'League of Legends' and this too creates cohesion and makes their products postmodern.

From a marketing point of view, cohesion is important because in order to promote the brand, audiences need to be able to immediately identify their favourite band/artist. Cohesion also helps to bring a sense of order and organisation with all the work that the artists and the production team do. They act as a device to connect the products together into a cohesive unit because they all share common features that audiences can recognise and enjoy.

Evaluation: Question 1

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

Our music video is hip-hop rap and it's rather unconventional because it's a twist on the classic love story (lusting for girls on social media) and therefore our images reflect this unconventional style. I think our images are romantic because in our print work, we have composed and framed in such a way that there is a layer of romance between the girl and the boy.

Use: These are a list of generic conventions that we used in our products. (music video, magazine ad, CD cover)

Music video:

- Andrew Goodwin's genre theory - relationship between music, lyrics and visuals for example Psy - Gangnam Style. This convention is incredibly important in the making of a music video in order to control the pace of our music video and to use as a platform to base our ideas. The effect is that the audience can follow the story and music video whilst being entertained.
- Andrew Goodwin's - Lot's of close up of the artist. For example Psy - Gangnam Style. Used because typically, the music video is to advertise the artist and appeal to their target audience. By following this convention, the music video is more popular because the fans support the artist and want to see him or her perform.














- Carol Vernalis - Narrative for example Eminem - Not Afraid. We felt a narrative plays a pivotal role in a music video to keep the audience engaged and establish a connection to the artist. The results of this is that the narrative gives the music video structure as opposed to solely a performance piece.


Magazine ad + CD cover + inserts:

- Unique font - For example, Eminem Recovery. In most magazine adverts + CD covers, the font is unique to the artist or band. This is to make sure the product stands out to the audience and so fans of the artist can immediately recognize their favourite artist in a printed product. The font also helps to promote the brand that the artist is making for himself.
- Images of the artist - For example, Eminem Encore. The artist needs to be in the print work in order to attract as much attention and fame as possible to promote their music and brand. The effect is that a symbiotic relationship is established that is developed between the artist and the print products.
- Release date - For example, Green Day. Release dates is a key feature in all print work products because the audience knows when to buy the CD therefore it's a convention of utmost importance to sell the artist. The effect on our music video is that the release that makes our print work more authentic.

Develop:

Music video:

- Narrative - Carol Vernalis for example, Eminem - Not Afraid. We created two narratives in our music video, one about our main singer and the other about the girl. This was because we wanted to tell two stories that had one end in a conventional way, the other an unconventional way because it adds a layer of postmodernism subverts typical stories.
- Cinematography - Carol Vernalis for example, Eminem - Not Afraid. We developed of Vernalis' theory of cinematography in our music video by having over the shoulder shots, low angles and arc movements. We wanted to have a variety of shots, angles and movements because Steve Neil said that there needed to be variety along with generic conventions. Also we wanted to make our music video unconventional and as a result, more interesting to the viewer.



Magazine ad + CD cover + inserts

- Images of the artist - Eminem Encore, we developed on the convention of having images of the artist by also including other characters in our music video in our print work. Despite the music video being mainly about the artist, we felt characters in music videos should be credited and given recognition because it's a collaborative effort.
- Editing - Green Day, we developed on the editing of the print work especially the magazine advert with the polaroid effect. It creates a sense of irony and keeps our magazine advert unique from the typical edited print work.

Challenge:

Music video:

- Stereotypes - 50 Cent Straight to the Bank. We subverted stereotypical hip hop music videos by having a female lead lusting for men instead of the other way around. This subverts the male gaze and complies with postmodernism. By having the male gaze not be present in the music video emphasizes this point and we felt this was necessary in order to create a postmodern music video because it's such a drastic change and would severely surprise viewers with this change.

You can see how we challenged the stereotypes of the hip-hop genre by having a white female as the main character in our music video.

- Carol Vernalis - Diegesis - Eminem - Not Afraid. We created a fantasy world in the music video where most of the guys have a mask on. These are intertextual references to other pop culture in order to appeal to the widest audience. There is also a layer of hybridity with fantasy, comedy and romance which is also used to stay unique and trendy with today's internet culture. The 'randomness' is incredibly popular as demonstrated by Psy - Gangnam Style.

Magazine ad + CD cover + inserts:

- Typical editing - Eminem Recovery - Typically, the print work in today's society are rather similar in terms of layout and font. However we decided to take ideas from the past with the Chad Mitchell Trio magazine advert by splitting out frame into thirds and having our three main characters in each of them. This creates a much more postmodern magazine advert by using ideas from the past in today's society
- Editing of CD inserts - Jason Derulo - We used Twitter and turned it into a dating site to be used in our CD inserts. This act of cross media convergence appeals to a wide audience and adds a layer of 'simulation' with intertextual references to our CD inserts.

Final Audience Feedback for CD Cover, Magazine Advert and Inserts

After watching the music video, we asked the same people what they thought of our print work. 

The first question was 'Do the front and back covers match the music video?'. The unanimous response was the CD covers did match the music video. This was the most important thing we needed to accomplish because we needed our products to be cohesive. The fact that they were all agreed that it was showed that we were successful.

The second question was 'Do you think the composition of the CD covers is aesthetically pleasing?'. The audience said that the CD covers look professional and had the features of a legitimate real life cover. The quality of the images, editing and font all contribute to making our CD cover look legitimate. Legitimacy is one of the main goals of making a successful CD cover so I'd say we were successful in this aspect.

The third question was 'Do you think the pictures we have chosen work well as the magazine adverts for the music video?'. The responses were positive, they liked how we split a frame into thirds with our main characters and the polaroid effect with our other magazine advert. However they thought that Kaden should be facing the other way to make our magazine advert abit more symmetrical. We didn't really think this was that big of a problem because of how minuscule this is.

The fourth and final question was 'Does all the print work work together as a cohesive media product with the music video?'. They said that our products were very good and eye-catching. They liked that there was a reoccurring theme throughout all our products so they all seem linked. However one said that the backgrounds for our inserts were quite jarring because the Twitter theme seemed too obscuring. Postmodernism was a high priority for us so we felt adding more intertextual references would cater to the largest audience (the internet) so that explains our heavy Twitter theme.

Final Audience Feedback for Music Video

For our final audience feedback, we decided to gather some of our media class consisting of 17-18 year olds who are our main target audience for a video reaction for all of our finished products, the music video, the CD cover, digipak and magazine adverts.

The first question for our music video was 'What were your initial thoughts of the music video?'. The responses were all positive and they thought our story was interesting and well thought out. The narrative was one of our key ways to being postmodern because we were essentially combining film techniques with a music video. As a result, we were relieved that the audience were positive about our decision. 

The second question was 'Do you think the music video fits the genre of the music?'. The responses were mixed because on one hand people thought that since the song was more modern, our use of technology in the video was very appropriate and was a nice reflection. However some people felt that we should have stuck to the conventions of the hip-hop genre in our music video which I would tend to agree but if we wanted to be postmodern, we needed to subvert certain conventions for it to be noticeable. 

The third question was 'Does the cinematography fit with the music video?'. We got criticism over the lighting in the bar scene with Cameron because it was clear that some shots were filmed at different times, hence the difference in lighting. Although I agree that those shots look out of place, we didn't know that the lighting was so different until we were editing it and by that point, re-shooting would have taken up too much time. But overall, they said that our cinematography was solid. 

The fourth question was about postmordernism and 'How were the masks, as a motif, add to the postmodern experience?'. The audience liked the masks and added a layer of hyper reality and they liked that the masks were also intertextual references. They also said that the masks were a representation of 'anonimity in the internet' and how people can put on certain character because they are anonymous. 

The fifth question was 'How does the editing convey the narrative of the video?'. The responses were that they thought the linear continuity editing was very well done. People also liked how the editing matched the beat of the music, complying with Andrew Goodwin's theory that the visuals should match the music. Our motif of the black bar wipe at the start of the video makes the video more postmodern because it's almost parodying typical straight cuts. It can also be a parody of how Star Wars uses wipe transitions. 

The sixth question was 'Do you believe that there's a relationship between the music, lyrics and visuals?'. This relates to Andrew Goodwin's theory and people weren't sure whether there was a correlation between the three factors. Furthermore, they said that the lyrics objectifies and has a voyeuristic treatment of women, another of Goodwin's themes. However we deliberately contradicted the lyrics of the song by having a female lead searching for men rather than vice-versa because we wanted to stay postmodern therefore we added some tongue-in-cheek humour in there whilst still staying true to the hip-hop genre.

The seventh question was 'Is the video repetitive in terms of themes and actions?'. The audience mentioned the 'rule of three' where three examples is enough for the audience to understand the concept which we did try to stick to. The audience did have positive responses to this and also added that the repetitiveness of the masks and dates made our diegesis more fantasy-like, complying with Carol Vernalis' theory. 

The eighth question was 'Is there anything that could be improves on?'. The responses were mainly unanimous, the lighting could be better, more postmodern elements, better location, very small little improvements that could be have been solved if we had more time, money and people. The fact that this coursework took place during A-levels meant that we were limited before even starting. I feel that we did the best we could with the resources and time that we had. We were bound to encounter problems at that point in time because people are busy doing their subjects. 

Intertextual References

One of our highest priorities in making our music video was postmodernism so we thought adding in intertextual references would be the optimal method to making our video postmodern. An intertextual reference is when a media source references another media source, usually to pay a homage or respect the source. It can be seen in the form of pastiche or parody and occasionally audience members who understand the reference will feel intelligent in doing so.

The recurring motif and intertextual reference that is prominent throughout our music video and print work is the Twitter theme which is an act of cross media convergence. With convergence, we can use Twitter as a social media platform to market our music video and establish a sense of cohesion. Furthermore, this is used as a narrative device to allow the girl in the music video to search for her dates. The Twitter theme also has an element of fantasy because every time she likes a photo, the guy appears next to her. These are all examples of hybridity, combining different genres together into one postmodern piece. 

Another example of cross-media convergence that also worked as an intertextual reference would be the YouTube overlay that we used for our music video. This broke the fourth wall and suggested to the audience that the events in this music video are not real. It questions reality and what's fantasy and what isn't. Also the YouTube video in itself is an intertextual reference to prank videos on YouTube which were a popular trend that allowed people to do cruel things to unsuspecting victims and get away with it because it was revealed to them later that it was 'just a prank'. 

The masks that the guys wear when the girl likes the photo of them are all intertextual references to other pop-culture. 

The mask that appears in this scene is an intertextual reference to Obito Uchiha from the anime 'Naruto'. 

The mask that appears in this scene is an intertextual reference to Batman, an iconic pop-culture character from DC Comics. 

The helmet that appears in this scene is an intertextual reference to the Kill Bill movie directed by Quentin Tarantino.