What have you learnt from your audience feedback? Part 2

Peers felt slightly different. They liked the focus on the main character but felt she looked a little boring in the shot on her own all the time, they felt that something in the background would be more interesting.

So acting on this we applied many chroma-key effects to the backdrop - removing the sky and behind that layering up more clips of Lorna to give the audience more too look at in the video.It was beneficial hearing from others, as in the eyes of me and the rest of my group the video seemed fine, and seeing parts over and over we get used to the video so may not pick up on certain parts like the repetition of a character or getting bored of the same sort of shot for example. Audience feedback gives us the oppertunity to build on what we already have, and in the real media industry this would be vital, as products would need to appeal to as many people as possible. In this situation it is important to know what people think.

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

Media technologies were used throughout the duration of the project, ranging from filming equipment to editing software.

Whilst making the project I used such technologies as a digital camera on a fig rig - this benifited my shooting as I was able to hold the shot more steady and get a smooth movement. I also used editing programmes like Final Cut Pro to edit the video together. This software is industry standard so helped make the video look brilliant. I also learnt how to use photoshop, a picture editing softeware that enabled me to create vibrant and interesting DVD covers and posters.

During the research and planning stages I used computer programmes such as microsoft word and powerpoint. These office programmes enable you to create presentations and documents with ease, which helped me in my music video presentation and when writing a questionare. I also used the internet and sites like Youtube to look up music videos from artists from my genre. I could look at their videos and draw conventions to use in my own video.

To evaluate my project I used a blogging site called 'Blogger.com'. This site enabled me to keep more or less a record of how the project was progressing. It enabled me to show the examiner how the whole portfolio went, and allowed me to show my knoledge of the topic and to really demonstrate my contribution to the project.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Over the course of the project I have had a lot of feedback about the video, some from people my own age and some from teachers. This gives me a good range of opinions and enables me to see not only what my target audience thought of the video but what others, who are a bit older and so may not be into this new kind of music.

Teachers said our video was a little repetitive. At this point we did not have a lot on animation to break up the stream of shots of Lorna. Acting on this we filmed more lego parts to water this down a bit and to make the lego a more integral part of the whole video. We also added different effects to the clips of Lorna, like the duplicate effect, where the clip is shown more then once in the frame. This gave a different feel to the video and made it more interesting to look at.

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

From the video I also developed on the theme of the Keyboard. I used the instrument on every part of my ancillary task to relate not only to the video but to the very genre itself. It is called 'synthpop' because it uses many synthesised sounds, so I felt it necessary to feature the instrument that makes this kind of music possible. In this way my ancillary task can relate directly to the music itself, as well as the video where a synthesiser was used.

Whilst editing the photos of Lorna using Photoshop I also used a 'neon glow' effect, which not only looked good but related directly to the artist's to the artist name 'Allegro Neon'.

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

My media product and Ancillary tasks link together well in many ways, for one my ancillary tasks are based on colours from the video - Purple and blue; these colours are used in our artist's main costume throughout the video. I decided to develop on this idea as from my research I had seen that strong colours play a vital roll in advertising and in our specific genre. In Jay-Z's latest album release 'Blueprints 3' he uses red and white as his main colour scheme, and these can be seen on album covers, posters and tour tickets. I used many isometric shapes to create a kaleidoscope effect with blue and purple around the outside, as this sort of strange futuristic effect can be seen in many Synthpop videos, in particular the official video of 'Bulletproof'. All the shapes which appear on the floor are isometric, and the whole set indeed is isometric in shape with many straight lines. I developed on this idea and made it my own in my ancillary task.

Evaluation - In what ways does your media product challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our video challenges many aspects of music videos and the synthpop genre as a whole. Synthpop videos are normally quite studio based - That is they are recorded in film studios and don't normally venture outside. We however decided to go against this idea and film a good portion of the video out in an ally and in a field. We did keep the film studio aspect to the video as I felt his was crucial, but tried to be original with this particular idea.

Evaluation - In what ways does your media product develop forms and conventions of real media products? Part 2

Throughout our video we were constantly developing conventions of music videos and our own genre.The synthpop genre is one that is very commertial in music terms to appeal to the mass audience, so we tried to reflect that in our video. We did a good portion of filming in the Music studio to visually represent this idea that the artist is more studio based then others. This also develops from the idea of a performing artist in videos, as in most music videos the band/ artist is seen performing as if doing a live gig. Our artist however did not, we tried to keep the performing aspect as this is a critical part of music videos, but move the location from a stage to a recording studio.

Evaluation - In what ways does your media product use forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product took the form of a music video, which is a very specific form of media. There are many different codes and conventions that need to be followed, especially with our chosen genre - Girl Synthpop. Our video took a Disjuncture form, meaning the images do not relate to the lyrics. This was a feature we observed from watching videos by people like Lady Gaga - her videos do not follow any sort of story and focus more on her singing and dancing like in her video of 'Poker Face'. She is singing about love, but we do not see this at all. The video consists of her dancing and playing cards. We used the principle of Graphic continuity in our editing through the use of the main singer; because we were editing in a montage fashion, the clips do not follow a liner path, so need a common feature to link them together. Like many music videos, our focus was on the main singer.Rhythmic cuts were also used to cut in time with the music, a major feature of all music videos. Great effort was made to lip sink every shot as this is crucial in music videos.

To relate to our genre we used the conventions of one main female singer to front the video, waring colourful costumes with many changes in hairstyle. Again this inspiration came from Lady Gaga, who has been at the forefront of the mainstream synthpop genre for many years.