1. A2 Music Video
Evaluation
Nicole Holder

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My media products use conventions of real music videos, Digipaks and promo
posters this is evident because I have used real media products to base my work
on as I was not looking to develop or challenge forms and conventions. I was not
looking to challenge forms and conventions because I felt that our artistic music
video had to follow a certain form because we still wanted to get our plot across
to the audience. There are a lot of influences from the real media texts I have
analysed which are ‘Papillon D’amour’ by Nicolas Provost (2005), ‘Novacane’
Directed by Nabil Elderkin, ‘Luv Deluxe’. We decided to use a smoke grenade in
place of a flare as we did not want to copy the King Krule video.

3. The second frame of our music video is
of Red Riding Hood holding a lit lighter
to imply that she is about to set
something on fire. We used conventions
of real media products by making the
creative decision to create a mystery
that the audience would want to carry
on watching, to figure out what she is
burning and the reason as to why she is
doing this. We kept the approach of
making our music video mysterious up
until the climax of the song so that it
keeps the audience intrigued. This
approach is similar to that of the director
Nabil Elderkin. I have followed the basic
layout the Rhianna’s ‘Loud’ Promo
Poster in order to make my media
product look professional.

4. How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary
texts?
the combination of my main product and
ancillary texts are very effective as it can be
seen that they are creatively linked through
symbolic devices such as the iconographic
red hood and the wolf. I think that the
combination is effective as I have pin pointed
the main aesthetic recognizable feature of
the music video which is the hood on the girl
and the wolf head on the man. Also, as we
come to the end of the music video we can
see that there is a surprising hierarchy as
Red Riding hood reigns powerful over the
wolf, I have made this evident in my digipak
and my promo poster as we can see Red
Riding hood is always bigger or looking don
on the wolf. Although there is not much
colour in my digipak or promo poster the lack
of colour is supposed to reflect on the tone
of the atmosphere of the music video while
the imagery is what links them to the music
video.

5. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
I have learned what my audience wants to see from the music video, what they
understood and what I should improve for more positive feedback. When I
presented my music video to my audience I found that the message of the
music video was understood and executed well however the pace at the
beginning moved a bit too slowly. I have also learned that it wasn't made clear
enough that Red Riding Hood turns out to be the 'villain' at the end as there
weren't many codes and conventions to suggest this notion in the camera
angles or the costume and make up. It could have been made more clear if the
was a 'worms eye view' of Red Riding Hood to show that she is powerful and in
control. Also, Red Riding Hood's hood could have been down to detach her
from the iconography and to symbolize that she is no longer the innocent
hooded fairytale character depicted in the fairytales.

6. How did you use technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation stages?
For my research and planning I viewed videos on Youtube that would aid my
research and searched Google for various pieces of information that would
improve my findings predominantly to help support my ideas. This has allowed
me to analyse the codes and conventions and understand how I could
incorporate them within my music video. When constructing the structure of the
footage and the transitions, the video editing software, Final Cut Pro X was
utilised. Using this program we structured the video footage we had recorded
into an order that would allow the audience to understand the plot which we
have portrayed in a artistic manner. The beginning title was created in Final Cut
Pro X as was the credits, we found it difficult finding the right font and font
colour that would not make it seem that it was the opening title to a move and
therefore draw attention away from the opening scene.

7. I have been using Blogger to document my research, planning and evaluation.
Blogger is a social networking site where you can update what you want
frequently, this allowed me to upload my findings often, however I feel that I
could have updated my blog more recently as I had much more to write. I have
also made use of facebook, this social networking site made it easy to contact
the other two members in my group. I have also made use of social
presentation websites such as Prezi which has given me the freedom to
present my work in a more exciting way, Slideshare, another social
presentation website I have included in my blog, has the same purpose. All of
the websites I have made use of have been made so that it is simple for the
public to use which is how I found these websites to be.
The editing software we have used allowed us to make the music video look
clean through the use of cuts such as simple 'straight cuts', 'dissovles' and
'cross fades'.
The music we have used is taken from the band 'Massive Attack' and the song
is called 'Paradise Circus'. We decided to use this song because it went well
with the morbid twist we decided to give the fairytale of Red Riding Hood. For
my ancillary task I used the image manipulation software Adobe Photoshop
because I have had prior knowledge on some of the tools due to using the
program in AS.