2. Introduction This is an evaluation for my music video, which I have been doing at the beginning of A2. This has been a big challenge but an enjoyable one. My group all have different skills which made it easier to get on with the project. We have been recording all our work on a blog, which has been quite hard due to the fact, I have never used a blog before but over the time of using the blog I have gained a wider understanding of how to use them. This year has been very beneficial as it has helped me understand how to use programmes like Photoshop a lot better.
3. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? We stuck to some of Katy Perry’s codes and conventions for example the camerawork, editing and narrative structure in our music video. We also stuck to the codes and conventions in our digipak and advert for example the layout, the images and fonts as seen on the previous slide. Some codes and conventions we challenged like adding special effects in the music video.
4. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? In our digipak and advert we used Katy Perry style writing and the same use of photos positioning, lighting etc. This is the style writing for our advert. This is Katy Perry’s style writing for her advert. The type of photos we used were like this... The type of photos Katy Perry uses are like this... In both sets of photos they have the use of props, close ups, standing pictures and a lot of girly positions with the use of arms. They also have similar style clothing, girly style clothing which compliments the typical girly poses.
5. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? We used simple camerawork as this is what Katy Perry usually does in her videos. We also had to use simple camerawork due to the fact that we didn’t have access to the right equipment to do anything extreme. We used a hand held camera for the walking scene and followed them, as this makes it look more real as walking isn’t always smooth, this also show the ups and downs in a relationship. We also followed a structured narrative of a love story as this is what Katy Perry usually does. There are no over the top parts like what Katy Perry does as we didn’t have the right equipment to enable us do that. We also used a lot of close ups as this is a typical camera shot in Katy Perry’s music videos, for example in the miming parts as she is by herself it emphasises this and it shows more expression almost as if she is thinking about the boy in her dream, but in real life.
6. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? In editing we all had a lot of good ideas but not all were easy enough to do, for example in our video for the dream like parts I had an idea to put I in a cartoon drawing type of effect to show it was a dream. For example like this drawing of Katy Perry. We couldn’t do this as this would of taken ages, so instead we just emphasised the colour’s in these parts of the video. In the digipak and advert it was very simple as we had used Photoshop the year before in our coursework, so it didn’t take long all we had to wait for, was to put our images in as we hadn't taken them yet. Editing the music video was the most fun bit at first we didn’t stick to Katy Perry’s usual videos and we put each different scene together, so it was in blocks, for example the woods scene and the park scene. We then realised this made it look simple and basic so we mixed it together so it changed on the beat of the music and jumped to different scenes but still looked good. This is also went with the dream idea as dreams change and don’t make sense sometimes.
7. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? We stuck to Katy Perry’s narrative structure, which is usually a love story, with a twist for example ‘I kissed a girl’ it’s based on love but with a twist of it’s a girl not a boy. So in our video we had a love story but at the end it leaves the viewer thinking is it real or is that the dream. As whenever she is with the boy it’s in the dream colours. Our layout of the advert and digipak is similar to Katy Perry’s as it has the same type of images, writing and composition of the writing. We also used similar images with both products like what Katy Perry does as this makes the audience recognise the digipak if they have seen the advert.
8. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? All the products relate to each other very well, for example the main actress in the music video is on the front of the avert and digipak and they all relate to the song title teenage dream. The white background gives a sense of a dream, as in dreams you usually don’t remember your surroundings just the people in it and significant things. This relates to the music video as the music video is based hugely on a dream. The actress, font style, colours and main theme which is the dream all make it easier to notice that it’s a package used as a promotional tool.
9. What have you learned from your audience feedback? Our group conducted interviews to different Katy Perry fans who were teenagers which were our target audience. The interviews were based on our video these are the questions an answers we got. 1)Do you think the storyline fits well with the song? Why? 1) Yes I do because the main focus is a dream and I like how it is in black and white when she is alone and colour when she is with her dream man. I also like it at the end when she bumps into him and it turns to colour. Its an “awwwwwwwwww” kind of story. 1) Yes but I think that the dream bits could be more emphasised than just colour. 1) Yes it fits well because the difference in reality and the dreams is noticeable and it’s something I could see Katy Perry actually doing in one of her videos. 2)Do you think the transitions work well or not? Why? 2) Yes I think they work well. I like the bit in the woods where they are walking along and it cuts to the same place throwing leaves at each other. I love the part when she opens the curtains and it slows down with the music, it’s really effective. 2) Yes because it changes constantly which is what happens in music videos so it doesn’t get boring. 2) Yes, but I think there should have been a lot more different scenes to mix in and also a few more effects to show it’s a dream like the one near the beginning when she is in the bed. Then there is effect ad it changes to the boy and girl together in a dream.
10. What have you learned from your audience feedback? 3)What do you think of the juxtaposition with the reality in black and white and the dream in colour? Do you think it works? Why? 3) I really like it and think it works a lot because if it was all in colour or black and white that would be really confusing to distinguish which is which. 3) It works but like I said before I think the dream could be emphasised a bit more rather than just colour. 3) I think it looks really good it makes the two more noticable and makes it attractive to the eye in my opinion. 4)What would you do different if you could? 4) I probably would not change anything. I love how the acting is completely natural with both the actors. 4) Make the dream in funny colours where you can’t really see what’s going on, as in a dream sometimes you can’t see what's happening or you don’t understand and this would make me be able to understand the dream bit more. 4) I would use a different actress no offence but, because this actress looked like she felt uncomfortable the song is lively and she doesn’t dance once where as in Katy Perry videos she is always dancing.
11. What have you learned from your audience feedback? 5)Do you enjoy the video overall? How many marks out of five would you give it? 5) Yes I did enjoy the video, I think it is really cute story and I would give it 4 out of 5. 5) I think it’s ok and I give it a 3. 5) I loved it and I think you all put a lot of hard work in to it and I give it a 5. From these interviews we received a lot of mixed views and now know that if we had a lot more time we would of done my idea of the cartoon effect for the dream. We also know that we did stick to Katy Perry’s style as Katy Perry fans like the music video.
12. What have you learned from your audience feedback? We also posted our video on YouTube and Katy Perry fan sites to see how many hits and comments we could get. Fan site YouTube On YouTube s far we have 127 hits and we haven't received any comments on YouTube or the fan sites.
13. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? We used a variety of technologies in our project which a lot didn’t exist 10 years ago. These technologies included things like YouTube and Facebook, which we posted our videos onto. Facebook was also used for our group members to keep in contact with each other we also used mobile phones. We used things like Photoshop and other programmes for editing these helped make our products look as professional as possible. We also used more simple programmes like Microsoft word and more. For backing up our work in case something happened to our blog creating tables before putting them on our blog and checking for simple spelling mistakes before uploading it on or blogs. We also used hardware like video cameras and normal cameras for still shots. The camera made our images look like an actual photo-shoot as we took them in the photography studio at college and the camera was an expensive photography camera.
14. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? All these technologies wouldn’t of been able to produce this product without the help of everything else. For example the still camera was needed as when we tried to take print screens from the footage of the video camera it looked distorted and the Freya the actress wasn’t in the right positions or her face wouldn’t be smiling and little things like that. We also wouldn’t have been able to do effects like what we did in our music video if we didn’t use the programmes we used. The communication would have been hard also if we all didn’t have mobile phones and Facebook to contact each other.
15. Evaluation This project has been fun and I have learnt a lot from the different programmes I have used I think the video was successful and the use of black and white and colour to show the difference between reality and the dream was an excellent idea. The digipak and advert also looked good as they resembled Katy Perry’s products. If I did this again I would definitely manage my time a lot better and also plan a lot more than what we did.
