Evaluation
Question 1:
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Create a 3 by 3 ‘art of the title’ style grid of screen shots from your film and then describe in detail with examples how it compares to a similar ‘real’ media product.
Above shown is a ‘3 by 3’ with stills form our music video, I chose those nine pictures because they are the most significant stills, representing and stereotyping our video. In picture one you see a girl lying in her bed looking at a picture of her (ex)boyfriend and being upset about the situation they go through. That sets the scene for the following visit of her friends and spending time together to get over the upsetting feelings. In music videos there is always a storyline with its locations, for example in house-music videos it always appears to be set in clubs. To go out and go clubbing needs to have a reason though, like in our video the conflict between girl- and boyfriend.
That is similar in Basshunter’s video “ Now you’re gone”. In that you can see a girl lying I bed, covered in pictures of her boyfriend, and being upset about her relationship. We filmed our female main actress lying in her bed actually looking at the pictures of her boyfriend and making her look like she is rethinking her breaking up with her boyfriend. We made our actress looking more upset about it, which is underlined by the tissue box in the background.
The top middle picture shows our male main artist being with his friends, which try to cheer him up with their company. That is actually the same scene in “Now you’re gone” where the friends come over and convince the main actor to go out with them. That describes the modern youth we tried to represent – even if you are in a bad mood you go out and try to have a good time with your friends.
In the top left picture our actors drive to the party and have a good time with each other. A similar scene is shot in Swedish House Mafia’s video “Leave the world behind” in which those three guys drive to a big event as well. Obviously they drove in a real car, but we managed as well to film our actors in a way that it looks like they would be actually driving.
The middle left picture sets the scene for the second part of our video, the club. Our picture shows a huge club filmed from above showing lots of people dancing to the music and throwing their hands up in the air. The same scene is in “Leave the world behind” in which a huge amount of people in a club go crazy to the music, and enjoy their time with their friend and under the influence of alcohol.
The center picture shows a DJ scratching the vinyls on the turntables, setting the mood in the club and getting the people to dance and to enjoy their time. A similar scene is shown The Pack’s video “Wolfpack Party” where you can see the same equipment on a live stage. I think however our shot is bringing the massage of a DJ entertaining the crowd better across due to an actual DJ standing and operating at the turntables.
In the middle right picture you see the stereotypical item of a club, a disco ball. It represents all the people going out, dancing, spending time with friends, getting together and drinking. This is stereotypical for our genre and it is actually filmed in the typical location, one of the biggest clubs in Frankfurt on New Years Eve. That allows us to make our video look real and can compare with others. Like in “Now you’re gone” where the used the smoke and laser shows to create the stereotypical atmosphere. I think however our disco ball does actually stick better to the theme and gives the audience the right idea straight away.
The bottom left picture shows the probably most stereotypical scene of our image of a night out the getting together. Based on our audience research though we decided to keep physical body contact as discreet as possible and not showing any inappropriate images. In ‘real’ media products though you will find much more ‘naked skin’ and probably inappropriate scene for certain age and ethnicity groups. E.g. in “Leave the world behind” where you can see a couple getting close in their hip area.
In the bottom middle picture you can see a crowed dancing, showing the huge amount of people coming together to celebrate. Again we had the chance to film this in an actual club, giving us the opportunity to show real life scenes. The same has been shot in “Wolfpack Party” showing as well a huge crowed enjoying the music and the dancing. As the lyrics in our song say: “Music brings the people come together”, they come together and spend their night out together.
The bottom right picture shows our female main actress drinking champagne. This is one of the ingredients of out stereotypical night out, alcohol. You don’t only see it in house music videos, nowadays it is common everywhere. But in our video we thought it actually plays a main part due to people regretting what they did and trying to forget it, like the break up between our couple. But there are other reasons to drink like just getting drunk and losing your own inhibitions. We thought that wouldn’t quite fit to our stereotype, however it is shown in ‘real’ media products.
Question 2:
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Create a prezi clearly showing how your three products link together and describing how each is linked and effective.
Question 3:
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Post your video on YouTube and Facebook. Access the ‘insight’ part of the site and assess how many people have viewed your video, where they are from etc. On Facebook, get your friends to leave feedback. Also film your classmates giving feedback on your film and post this.
We uploaded our video coursework on YouTube and are actually surprised by the many views we already have - 157 views, and we didn't even uploaded it on Facebook. This has been due to school internet issues that didn't allow us to upload it, but we obviously posted our YouTube video on Facebook. 88 views are from Facebook only what confirms the power of this huge internet platform. Therefore we actually calculate with many further view when we get the chance to upload the video on Facebook and be able to link all the actors and friends from my New Years party in the video. 16 views (10%) are from mobile devices, another sign of the strength of smart phones and the importance of portable media for contributing film and video. Our own blog got us 21 views which is probably on behalf of Facebook as well because I sent the link of our blog up there as well. The other views are all coming from searching results on YouTube which is quite a good effort as well. According to YouTube is our video's most popular audience a male aged between 13 and 17 years, however I don't really know where they could have this information from. The only way to find our the viewers age is from registered YouTube members that stated their age, however am I doubting that. Further more, and more reliable is the appendix showing where the viewers are coming from, most popular is our video in: The UK and Germany. Still a few clicks but less popular is it in: France, Spain, Portugal, India, Australia, USA...
Our blog has been visited quite often as well and this time there is another big distributor: "Mrs Blacks Media Wordpress", our teachers Media Platform. And again Facebook...
We scored a total of 581 views, most of the clicks around this February. This is probably due to our video release on our blog. The viewers are all coming from pretty much the same countries like the viewers form our video.
This appendix shows the page views by countries, browsers and operating systems. Interesting is the high amount of UK views due to me being German and trying to promote it to rather my german friends. As well is it interesting to see what people watch our video with, like iPods, iPads and Windows smart phones.
The following is a video of our friends and classmates giving feedback on our video:
We obviously appreciated our friends honesty and their compliments about our video. The common suggestion to improve the video was to put a proper end of the storyline in it by shooting our main actors having either a happy ending or a final breakup. To be honest if I could film again, I would try to improve the continuity and just a get final shot in the video. We tried that, however didn’t get to produce the same atmosphere again. So we decided to leave it how it is, but we definitely agree with the feedback and would improve it.
Question 4:
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Create a prezi or use a Wix site to describe the technology you have used.
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