Dale's Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Wix - Dale Luck's A2 Media Evaluation

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

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Since the beginning of the project we have used feedback to change almost everything to do with the band. For example, when the project began the band went by the name of Saxon Static and used a Radiohead song. After getting feedback from fellow class members who fell into the target audience, we discovered that the name wasn't as particularly fitting as we had first though, instead making people think of band styles that were much more classic-rock oriented, like Van Halen. After spending a rather large amount of time attempting to think of a name, we just couldn't think of one that would fit the style of the song we had chosen, which lead to us then rethinking the choice in song - what we settled on after that was Lippy Kids by Elbow. What we did then was construct a new target audience based on the new style we were going for, and asked members of the school who fit into that group what they imagined the group would be like, which then lead to the current construction of the band that focuses on a much more professional, straight forward image than we originally had in mind. What I learnt from this feedback was that different styles can be reflected in very different ways that not everyone will be able to see - in this case, the original band name had very little consideration put into what style it conveyed, eventually forcing us to change the entire song, style and name (We Three Fools).

When constructing the magazine advert and digipak, I wanted to reflect this new style, but really did rush their design. What I had during the draft stage was essentially some unrelated artwork there to just look nice, an effect that was drastically reduced thanks to my inability to see that I'd accidentally colour corrected it enough to make it the photos green, a view reflected in the feedback gained from various class members. In order to try and fix everything wrong with it, I redesigned the entire magazine advert whilst retaining the original inspiration for the digipak, opting for the use of black and white photos to avoid any colour problems that may arise from being colour blind again, and getting opinions on what was and wasn't working in term of the colour scheme. The montage of performance photos in the Biffy Clyro album that inspired me was taken to the extreme for the design of the magazine advert, using very similar styled photographs of our own band to create a professional but attractive layout. However, whilst people did praise my final magazine advert, the digipak didn't turn out as well as I would have wanted, which many pointed out to be because of the style of the band that was used to inspire it - the band Biffy Clyro's style wasn't at all like what we had wanted with ours, and yet I had used their style to inspire almost every aspect of my own digipak, resulting in a digipak that just didn't fit the style I was going for. What I learnt from this stage of the coursework and the feedback gained was that it's very important to put as much focus on the consistency in style over all the products, not just focusing on one like I did and neglecting the others.

With the music video, the original plan and final plan differed greatly because of the feedback we gained and the experience we had during early stages of production. As we attempted to meet the deadline of the draft, we were using a combination of narrative shots and performance shots, but came across a lot of problems during the shooting that meant we had a lot of shots left to shoot by the time the deadline came and we weren't able to properly meet it. The feedback we got on that process was that the narrative shots we did have didn't work anyway, and that to avoid problems with the final video we should just use performance shots and avoid having any narrative at all - these comments were from teachers and students alike. What we learnt from this was that keeping things as simple as possible works best, and the more complex the idea the more problems that can arise. The feedback we gained from this draft was invaluable in increasing the quality of our final video.

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



Evaluation Question 1

http://www.wix.com/little_bill123/evaluation-question-1

Evaluation question 2

evaluation Question 3

Media Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 4 on Prezi

Media Evaluation

How effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

Between the digipak and the magazine advert i think I have made them in the same branding, I think this because I have used the same colours throughout the whole digipak and advert and the same font with the album name and band name, the reason why I have done this is because it connects the two pieces of work and people will be able to tell that it is We Three Fools stuff. But the biggest branding I have in my work is the silhouette piece of the band member on the front cover of the album and the front of the magazine advert.  Though two silhouettes are the recognisable symbol of We Three Fools and as soon as people will see them they will know what band it is. The music video connects with the two ancillary projects because in the silhouettes you can tell who is who when you look at them. Another way you can tell is that behind the CD is the instruments of the band members put together so you know what instruments they are using and hopefully you will know it We Three Fools because we will be the only band doing it at the time. I think the genre of the video connects well with the digipak because of the softness of the song and how the three members look inside the digipak, but one floor I will say is that the front cover of the digipak would look better if I had swooped it around with the one of the magazine advert, this is because it looks a bit to rocky compared to the rest of the it.

Media Evaluation

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Music Video

"Setting is a bit 'school like'. Frontman looks beautiful. Ugly bass player. Lip sync bit rough in places. Some good framing. Bass fits with music. Without gaps would be a 7. - 6 / 10"

The setting In the music video look like a school location because its was done in the drama studio. At first we used the e-learning centre but we got told that it doesn’t look like they would film a music video there, so we tried to get the stage which would make more sense when recording a music video but the panto had book it out for the next two weeks so we went for the next best option which was the drama studio and I think it looked better than the e-learning centre. The gaps in the video happened over the weekend because we got a little extra time to do it because the laptop was being really slow and we had to get the bus home. But when we finished all of the editing and rendering then we noticed that it had gaps because the two clips didn’t last as long as we thought and by that time we didn’t have enough time to do it all again considering we already had an extension.

"Setting is simple, could've been better but understandable. Mise en scene with costume and setting works well, fairly simple. Nothing too bright and colourful. Lip syncing is mainly good, couple of times where slightly out of sync but overall good. Timing with keyboard and bass is good. Bass player needs a haircut. Singer needs a shave. Panning is very effective - gives video a bit of an edge. If it weren't for gaps, would be class. - 6 / 10"

The setting again was a last minute thing because of the stage being booked all the time. The only things I thought was wrong with the mise en scene was all the school equipment in the background e.g. chairs and posters. Some of the singing was done without the music because one of the band members had to go early and we had to get his shots done as quickly as we could. I did suggest to the bass player about shaving his head for him but he wasn’t having it, credit to dale with the panning matching the pace of the music.

"Styling / choice of artists is good. Movement of shots work well. Seems to be in sync with instruments. Simple mise-en-scene works well. - 7 / 10"

We tried to keep the costumes all similar and quite smart because it goes with the slow music of the video. Dale did very well to get the number of different shots in the video and we used Mr Fords advice and made the band members connect more by looking at each other during the video. I only really had one note to play on the keyboard but in the original music video the is a piano and a keyboard which in are video make some of my syncing look a little out.

"A good variety of shots. Simplistic idea works well. Could include slightly more action. Characters look the part. - 5 / 10"

We tried to put in a story as well as a performance but it looked better without one and it was much simpler to do for us. The reason why there is not a lot of action because in the original video there is just a performance but if there was more action in it, it would go against the genre of the music and the slowness. We had been told by a couple of people that it looks a proper band because Pats looks like a front man, I look like a keyboard or drummer and harry looks like a guitarist and not a singer.

Digipak

“Though the colours went well together, simple but it works and I like how you have put Pat on the back cover”

I though the same way you can’t go wrong with black and white and Mr Ford was telling me to make simple and I looked at Linkin Park album which I like and it was simple so thought I would couple. And I used Pat on the back cover because his band leader and it would be better for advertisement if I put him on the back cover.

“Liked the picture behind the cd, the background of one of the pictures with the fire escape is a bit out of location”

The picture behind the cd is the two guitars and the keyboard put together on Photoshop like a skull and cross bow, I did this just trying to find something to put on my advert and ended putting it on my digipak behind the CD. The fire escape in the background is in the e-learning which is were we did are first photo shoot and I wanted a picture of all of us separate.

Advert

“Looks there is something missing in it”

I thought the same thing but I was running out of time and I was just trying to fill the space but the main thing I liked about it was the silhouette on the front.

“The silhouette links well with the digipak and video makes it all connect”

I tried to make them all have the same branding so they are all recognisable to the public that they are We Three Fools merchandise. it didn’t take me long to do on Photoshop either which I thought was the best thing about it.