The document discusses the evaluation of the student's media products for a music project. It analyzes how the album cover, poster, and music video challenge or follow conventions of real media. The music video aims to challenge conventions by illustrating the relationship between lyrics and visuals, and music and visuals. The genre and style draws from the band Fall Out Boy. Overall, the products conform to some points of music video theory but challenge others due to being an animation. Feedback informed changes to improve the products and connection between them. A variety of software like Fireworks, Pinnacle, and online tools were used at different stages.

1. Evaluation

2. How do my products use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

3. My album cover (left) follows both conventional and unconventional properties. It is unconventional in the way that it has no colour within it, however the cover above this shows the same properties by having no colour within it, but this one does have more black than white, which could be seen as conventional. It could also be seen as unconventional in the way that it has no real images in it, however it does have a drawing, which fits into the theme of my overall products. It could be seen as conventional because the name of the band is the biggest text on the page, highlighting them to their audience. It could challenge forms of real media products because it is a very plain cover yet it is still eye-catching My poster (right), like my cover, could be seen to follow both conventional and unconventional forms of media. It is very similar to my cover in the way that it uses no photo images and it has no colour to it. It does however, seem to follow some conventions as seen in the poster below it. This poster has limited text and a single image on the front of it, this image is not a photo image, instead it is a cartoon type image much like my own poster. Again, it has the name of the band as the biggest piece of text, bringing in the normal conventions of media products.

5. There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with them illustrating, amplifying or contradicting each other. Within my music video, I have told the story of a man and his attitudes towards women, I have highlighted the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals by having my character act out what the lyrics are stating at that particular time. For example, when the lyrics go “do you remember the way I held your hand”, they hold hands, as seen below. Throughout the song, the lyrics “the truth is worse than anything I could bring myself to do for you” is heard repeatedly, I have interpreted this and portrayed it within my video as my main character not loving his partner anymore but not wanting to hurt them. I have used multiple female characters, each one my main characters finds a way to get away from within the film, this shows the extent to his destruction to females and how often it happens.

6. There is a relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics. Within my video I have tried to adjust the pace and timings of my video to match the visuals, I have succeeded with this for the most part, for example, towards the end the chorus changes pace to a much slower one. I have matched this by getting a close up of my character looking as if he is sorry for his behaviour. I think that it is important to conform to this convention when doing an animation film as it is more effective to capture the emotion of the characters within the video and also create empathy for them when using both visual and musical triggers together

7. Genres are complex and diverse in terms of music video style and iconography. The genre of my chosen song is indie/pop, the normal style of video for the group is a very alternative, fantasy type video, with quite a lot of band coverage. I tried to continue with this unique theme through my video but because I was doing an animation it creates a totally different style than doing a recorded video. I think I have covered some of the aspects that run through their genre though, one of these being the style of my main character. His hair and facial features fit in well with the style of the band, as this is one of the main iconic traits of this particular band. The way that they look is very important to their style. I have selected a few shots from other Fall Out Boy videos, showing how abstract they can be. It would be hard to replicate their style exactly, however I have put a few of their styles into my video.

8. That record companies will demand a lot of close-ups of the main artist / vocalist. As my video is an animation, it does not show any of the artists of the band, however it does portray the artists in the video as the characters are a similar style to how the artists look in real life, in particular the guitarist (shown below). Also, as my video follows a particular storyline, it doesn’t have a lot of close ups, only the main one near to the end.

9. That there are likely to be intertextual references to other forms of media within the music video. There are not many intertextual references to other media products within my film that I am aware of, however there is intertextuality within my movie and my digipack as they are all based upon the same theme. I think that this intertextuality between all of my products creates a nice link between them, making them seem more realistic and professional.

10. Andrew Goodwin’s theory of music videos. Overall, I have found that my video does conform to certain points within Goodwin’s theory, mostly the first two points. However because it is an animation video, and it doesn’t fit in with the rest of his rules, it could be seen as unconventional.

11. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? I think that I could have made the poster and album cover a bit brighter however, maybe using one of the brighter colours from within the video, which would make them stand out more, but I still think that the colour scheme I went with is effective. My video and matching products go together well for a number of reasons. The main reason is the running colour scheme throughout my products. In my movie only slight bursts of colour are used to emphasise different situations, but the majority of the video is black and white, like my products. Another reason is that the font and images on my poster / album cover match the animation theme of my video by being simple and looking almost hand drawn. These links make it easy to see all of my products together and would make them accessible and easily visible for people who wanted to buy the products.

12. What have you learnt from your audience feedback? My feedback informed me to change a lot of things that I had originally thought was fine. As my target audience is teenagers, I asked teenagers for my feedback and for both positive and negative criticism. The main change that I was advised to make was with my font choice, I had originally chosen to go with a more cartoonish font but as I asked for feedback on a first draft a few ideas came through about a slightly different font. I decided to listen to this and changed it, after that feedback on my new font choice was well received. This is the progression of my album cover through feedback and improvement.

13. How did you use media technology in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages? Construction I produced the majority of my digipack on Macromedia Fireworks. I found this easy to control, especially since my use of it last year in my AS work, however , some aspects of my digipack were tricky to get right, such as the cartoon look and shape of the heart that is used throughout my products. I also used uploading websites such as Slideshare (for PowerPoint's) and Vimeo (for videos) to get an embedding code for my blog. You can upload videos through Blogger, however it is often slow to use and Vimeo was deemed quicker and more efficient. I created my video, however, on Pinnacle Studies, which was tricky to use at first, as it was all new to me. With this I think the hardest thing to get right was the timing, especially with the amount of shots I had to put in there, and it did take longer to make my movie through that than I thought it would, however I think that the result from it is very good.

14. How did you use media technology in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages? Research For my research I mostly used different music video websites to view videos and evaluated them onto my blog. I found this easy to use however the youtube videos do not work on the school network and some of the yahoo music videos are not available in my area, so it was frustrating to find a way around that.

15. How did you use media technology in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages? Planning Through my planning stages I used a number of different media products. I created a storyboard that I drew out and then put onto a PowerPoint presentation. I also planned which fonts I was going to use and downloaded them from the website ‘DaFont’.