Evaluation by Tamanna

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

To develop our own media product, our starter point was to choose a song which was copyright free therefore we visited Jamendo and browsed around for songs which differed to everyone else’s song type and the type of song we could work. This is when we came through with the song Lisa’s song by Allison Crow. The genre of this song was ‘POP’ as a result as a group we made a start via brainstorming our initial ideas of how we were going to meet the conventions of a real pop media product. So we brainstormed a few ideas of the iconography such as girl in her bedroom, piano and a male involved etc, conventions of location; bedroom, walking by a canal, conventions of costume; simple elegant black dress, casual jeans and tunic tops boots etc including makeup – subtle and neutral and rapid ideas of the camera shots for example, voyeurism through bedroom window, establishing shot and bird’s eye view of piano etc. These camera shots were all initial ideas, as we progressed some we used some we didn’t.

As well as all the above we had brainstormed we also thought of what type of video was it going to be? This led us individually researching pop videos; I had decided to look at Kelly Clarkson – Because of you. From this video the idea we had used for our media was the 'Black room/Black back drop' where Kelly’s singing to the camera, which I do believe engages the audience attention – it is also a typical convention as the audience may feel they are going through the same situation, for example hurt, torn into pieces due to their loved one’s leaving etc which would make sense to our narrative. As a result we chose to add the black backdrop idea to our video with Jessica singing into the camera.

In our media product, we had subverted the convention of using a male in our music video and replaced it through a picture of Jessica and her boyfriend to give the audience a better understanding and narrative of the media product. As a group we did this because we had decided since this is an emotional journey for a broken hearted women, we wanted Jessica to be the main focus so thinking out the box has helped us to challenge the conventions of a pop video as we found that Delta Goodrem – Lost without you which is a Pop genre had used a male in her video. Also the picture of Jessica and her boyfriend is torn into two pieces, which is shown in the media product to signify her reminiscing and looking back at the memories she had with her boyfriend. She also shows a box full of items such as – football t-shirt and gift box he gave her etc. this all gives you an idea that she misses her boyfriend and she’s holding on to his things because that’s the only memory she’s got at the moment.

In our video we had used several locations as I’ve seen they do this in pop videos location scouting is a vital process, as it is appealing to the audience as they don’t have to watch one location as you can imagine that’ll be boring, so therefore going on a location scouting ourselves, we found locations which formed conventions for a pop video such as bedroom – girly, canal – emotional, piano area – isolation , outside the house – passing time, black back drop – engaging to the audience  - expressing to move on with life, next to the tree – isolation and lonely and Thames barrier – walking through maze connoting her life’s a puzzle. These locations went well with the narrative, as the narrative is a linear narrative in the video, as it is about a young women reminiscing about her relationship with her boyfriend which she no longer is with. Looking at range of pop video’s that was a significant narrative in majority of pop videos, therefore we conformed to the typical narrative as our target audience could engage with and see our video as personal relationship.

In our music video the semiotics are found throughout the video, which creates meaning. As the actress is alone in through out different scenes having the actress always alone during the video signifies that she is alone, lonely and an emotional wreck.

Including voyeurism in our music video showed the vulnerability of our artist as she was always alone.

The 2 intertextuality we used in our music video are from two different artists, one intertextuality is from Kelly Clarkson’s video the black back drop which I’ve mentioned previously another is from Cheryl Cole’s video this was used at the end of the video were Jessica lights up a match stick in complete darkness which is also found in Cheryl Cole’s video.

Our actress named Jessica Harvey is best known as Jessica York on stage. I met Jessica through Nilufa as they are friends. The reason why we chose Jessica is because she conformed to the typical female artist you would see in pop videos for example you wouldn’t see a Bangladeshi girl in a pop video singing – that is very rare to be found. Jessica’s voice also suited the voice of Allison Crow watching back the video’s this was a big positive was for us as a team. Also the talent that lies behind Jessica was amazing, as she taught herself to play the piano with the tune of our song. This meant we could show our audience Jessica playing the piano which was great!   

Jessica also proved that she was well organised, managed her time, trustworthy and very reliable as she had attended all the shooting schedules including over the holidays.

Jessica’s appearance had conformed to the age category we had put down for Jessica York’s profile, which was age 23, which she looked when she was dressed and dolled up which was a huge advantage for us as she is only 18. However she looked older than her age when she had her hair and make up done which would be appealing to a broad audience.

Taking on board all the above information, to connect this to our ancillary tasks, during the filming process there were always 2 of the team members with a digital camera to take several pictures of Jessica so we could select the appropriate pictures to go on the ancillary tasks. The ancillary tasks are to create a magazine advert and a digipak.


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

On the magazine advert the branding we have chosen for our main product is Asda.

As a group we choose this carefully as we wanted our Artist to be recognised therefore by selecting Asda it will give us the opportunity to gain a broader audience and may appeal to them. Another reason is because Asda supermarkets are were our target audience could be browsing during their shopping and come across this artist. We also didn’t want to throw her in the mainstream world (such as HMV) straight away as we wanted her to be recognised gradually by a niche audience so she can be successful rather than challenging herself with the mainstream retailers.

The star construction of Jessica York through our main product and ancillary task would definitely be her significant green scarf which is shown through our music video – which she wears in the canal scene, therefore as a group we decided on the pictures which were taken during the shooting to have a image of Jessica with her green scarf for the magazine advert and digipak so she will be easily recognised by the audience and can be linked to the music video. Jessica’s green scarf was a representation of herself throughout the main product and ancillary texts, we’d also hope for it to be an iconography of Jessica and straightforward for the audiences to buy from Asda supermarket.

For our digipak this offers the consumers to gain something more close to the artist rather than downloading it of the internet and storing it on their MP3 which has no real connection and at  risk of corruption and can easily be lost.

By buying the digipak it also offers the audience to have a collection – as this is much more satisfying than free downloading.

The consumer will also find the CD has better sound quality than MP3!!!

Also not to forget that buying the digipak also gives the audience the opportunity to be opt in with the bonus material with the CD for example in our Digipak we have offered to give out a signed poster of Jessica York to add the ‘precious’ touch to it.

Another reason to have a digipak nowadays is because if you meet celebrities you can’t get your Mp3 signed now can you? So therefore if you have a digipak you’re likely to get a signed CD. :)

I would expect my audience to come across Jessica York by noticing the magazine advert firstly and then possibly buying the digipak. I’d also like them to come across it through the internet and social networks such as Youtube, Myspace and Facebook…etc. Also another way for them to find out more about Jessica York would be by visiting her URL which is found on the magazine advert.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Well to start off, we received feedback at different times as it was vital we conformed to the pop conventions also we followed the expectations from our audiences.

The first time we obtained audience feedback was from the other media class, which was on the selected choice of song we choose to do for our music video. The reason why we did this was to see the expectations of how our music video would have to be like and whether we needed to add things on to our initial ideas.

There then was a rough cut of our music video on our blog which we found the piano section not as appealing as we wanted as her hair was fizzy and the make up wasn’t as glamorous as we wanted it to be so therefore we chose to re-shoot that section.  

So this time we had her hair up and more silver eye shadow however the feedback we received from Ms Pollard was that her eyes stood out way too much and it wasn’t appealing! So therefore we chose to use our blog because we couldn’t decide whether it looked appealing to our audience with her hair up or down.

 This is were I set up a poll and asked the question “Rough Footage - Piano scene which take is better 1 or 2”

As a result it was hair down that took on the lead therefore we conformed the our audiences feedback and on the 4^th shoot we had her hair down and did her make up a lot lighter and went subtle with the silver eye shadow.

There then was another audience feedback on our Music video which was towards the end of our project, we had followed the other feedback which had helped us greatly during the process of making the video and conforming to Pop videos.

This time round the feedback we received was that we needed to use a clearer photograph of Jessica and her boyfriend as we had a photograph that was too dark to be seen in the video plus Jessica was in a different outfit and was wearing glasses however we never see that side during the video therefore it confused the audiences and the narrative slightly.

We were also suggested to include more significant items around the picture for example, cinema tickets or a love note etc.  Once we had taken the feedback on board and applied it to our music video our audience were much impress and could understand the narrative with the clear photograph of Jessica and her ‘boyfriend’.

Towards the end of the video, there was a clip where Jessica’s lying back down on a gravel, we had a half – half disagreement from the audience, one half thought it didn’t make sense and asking why is she just lying there however  the other half who said it had conformed to the idea of her emotional wreck and it went with the flow of the song, so as a group we decided to keep it in as it was towards the end and through out the video you see Jessica and her emotions building up however that clip was to express her letting go.

We had also received feedback for our ancillary task, we were asked to brighten the green scarf as it’s a representation of Jessica York and is significant!

 Overall we received very helpful advice, which we appreciated through out the process.

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

To begin we used the internet to search for our choice of song which was found on Jamendo as mentioned previously. We downloaded the song off the website to our Mac and transferred it to everyone’s phone, this was handy during the shoots as we would play the song on our phones and engage with the singing with Jessica for moral support and boost her confidence as she would be actually singing which helps greatly when editing.

For our research we also used ‘Youtube’ to observe the pop videos as mentioned at the beginning.

The internet played a huge role in our research as we obtained images from Google for our Digipak ideas and analysed them on our Blog. We used Blogger to store our information and a log of what we had been doing every media lesson this also included research ideas to the days we would be filming. This was very useful as we could reflect back to the work at later stages for example, this very moment looking back at our blog has helped me to evaluate my work better as I would’ve forgot to mention bits and bobs.

To communicate with each other we did this through Facebook and mobile phone as it was easy to access all members in our group.

 We’d also surf the internet for the latest fashion in clothes for our actress,, we’d visited websites such as Dorothy Perkins, New Look and Topshop as these are typical websites girls get on to shop.

We also used ‘Wordle’ for the lyrics which we developed it to our digipak for the right hand panel inside.

Adding to our ancillary task, we had used Photoshop to produce our Magazine advert and Digipak. The images were primary source obviously of our actress which we had taken during the process of filming…

Not forgetting we had used 2 video cameras as we wanted to get as much footage as we could from different angles and shots. To edit our video we used iMovie on Mac, iMovie was also used to make our rough cuts.

For our evaluation we used iMovie to record our group discussion through video mode.