Evaluation

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research,

planning and evaluation stages?

Before we story boarded our music video we researched music video's of the same genre. In order to do this we used youtube and Myspace. This is showing that web 2.0 has improved the media for the better as now instead of just making a video with no other ideas, you can go online and research/get ideas from different music videos that are already out. Web 2.0 has also improved the way that music videos can be improved as once we finished our music video we put it onto social networking sites such as youtube and Facebook which got us feedback from other people who listen to that genre of music.

The editing software that we used to edit our video was called 'I-movie.' at the start of the project I didnt know how to use the software that well, I could only do the basics of the program. After I spent afew hours learning how to edit I think that our video was edited quite well. We decided to use different editing ways of cutting to different parts of our music video. In order to do this i learnt how to put in things such as swipes and fades. I think this fits in with our music video as it is a up-beat song and this sort of editing was used in the videos we researched within our music genre.

Mise en scene plays a big part in most music videos as if the actors are wearing different clothing throughout the music video then it wont look as good. This is very important in our music video as well although in a lot of it we have changed clothes because we were showing that we have fun anywhere at anytime without girls. I think that our music video follows the hypodermic syringe theory due to the fact that we follow the lyrics of the song during our music video. The hypodermic syringe theory says that the video of a song just follows the lyrics.

Evaluation

What have you learned from

your audience feedback?

To get audience feedback we posted our music video on social networking sites such as facebook and youtube. This helped us find out what people thought of our music video and what we could improve on. Most of the comments where saying about what they thought of the video, E.G. it was good but needed a bit more editing to make sure its synced. This helped us in creating our video as from the feedback we got we were able to edit our music video and make sure that we cover the problems that other people gave us.

We have posted our music video onto social networking sites such as youtube and facebook and received a lot of feedback. Some of it wasn’t that helpful they just said that they either enjoyed it or disliked it. But most of the feedback helped us improve on our mistakes and learn from them. We had 6 different people saying about the syncing of our music therefore we realized this was a problem and decided to go back into the editing software and make sure that it was synced correctly.

We also got some feedback saying about things they liked. Three people said that they liked the way that the camera cuts back and forth between shots to keep in timing with the fast paced music. This helped us as we could then make sure that we included more cross cuts in our video.

Some people told us about our editing and how we could improve. At the start of our video we didn’t any special edits such as fades and swipes. We saw this and decided to put in a special effect every 3-6 seconds when the video would switch to a different setting. I think this improved the video because before it was quite plain and this brought more entertainment and fun into the video. We also realized that in the videos that we had been researching they used a lot of these techniques therefore we were keeping within the genre of our music video.

Evaluation

How effective is the combination of

your main product and ancillary texts?

For the design of our front cover I have decided that to fit in with the style of the music we needed a ‘fun’ cover due to the fact that the song is quite up beat and happy. The song is also full of comedy which is why we have aimed for more of a comedy cover. I think this works well with our music video as it shows that the friends in the video are very close.

I decided to create the lyrics page as more of a serious picture to the front cover. This is because I feel it shows that the actors in the music video have a stronger relationship. This is important because the lyrics of our song is about how the actors are best friends and don’t need girls to have fun.

On my ‘thank you to the fans’ pages we have designed it so it shows how close the friends are to show the relationship. We took it from a slightly higher angle to show the whole body and make it look as if our friendship was vulnerable because were so close. In our 'thank you to the fans' and 'lyrics' page we decided to make it back and white as some of the other pages that we researched used this effect.

Evaluation

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

In some pop/comedy music videos they will start off with an introduction to the music. This will be just when it shows the actors in the music video having a build up into the story line/lyrics of the music. We decided to do this in our music video, but due to the fact we didn’t really have a story line apart from sleeping over a friends house therefore we just showed us walking up to the house and entering, that’s when the music enters.

In the real music video they don’t have an introduction but we thought we would need one to show that it was set inside a house. We did this because we were limited to the places we could film unlike in the real music video so we thought that we should establish where the music video is set.

I watched a lot of music videos within the genre of pop/comedy and noticed that they where using a lot of close ups (they would have a close up every 3-5 seconds) therefore we tried to stick to this. We would cut back and forth to a close up of the singer. This is not only because the genre of our song normally uses close ups but the speed of the song demanded that we have a lot of cutting/cross cuts in our video. I think we have used the cuts quite well in our music video due to the fact we filmed the whole music video but with different camera angles.

We also noticed that they used a wide range of shots in-between the close ups (mid shots, long shots extreme long shots, high angles, low angles and more.) This is why in our music video we tried to add in a lot of these shots such as the one to the left.

Editing is a huge part in a music video. In our music video editing has played a big part because we have to cut back and forth between shots to fit in with the pace of the music. We have also used fades, swipes and cross cuts to put the different shots together. I think we have done this well due to the fact the song is fast so the editing makes the various shots fit together well.

In the music videos that we looked at they used a lot of editing to cut back and forth from different shots. We liked this technique as it fit in with the speed of the music video and also we could use a lot of editing as we had seen in the music videos we researched.

I also feel that within our music video we were able to use a lot of different shots and new creative ways in showing things such as the title to the music video. Instead of just putting it on the credits we recognized that the music video was about a phone call (booty call) and so we used a phone to show the title of the song.