A2 Media Evaluation

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

Pop Promo Commentary Chris & Suzi

The forms and conventions of my media product depend greatly on its genre. Within my pop promo the actors/band members are appealed as you would expect them to be in this kind of genre also for this kind of genre the pop promo focus’ mainly on the lead singer which meant that lip syncing was involved quite a lot throughout the pop promo. Also with this genre there isn’t a specific type of video that is used with major artists, but the most common is when you see the band performing throughout the video which means that there isn’t a specific narrative but following that we can represent the song with editing making the pop promo cut to the beat or rhythm to the song. The artists or bands image is key throughout and with a pop promo like this the band is represented in their own style to show that they are unique, and usually their target market is easily noticed by the band’s fashion. With regards to the technical side of pop conventions, the camera shots are usually different and fast paced. This means a variety of long, medium, close up and extreme close up shots. The movement of the camera is usually very varied, with the use of still tripod shots and overhead crane shots to establishing shots as well as pans to emphasize the energy that the band is portraying as their style. Not only are all these shots edited to the beat of the music, but usually very fast to keep audience interested and wanting to watch it again to catch bits they may have missed first time.

The video below is one of the pop promos that was most inspiring to me for this years project for A2 media. It is a pop promo from The Gallows who were a small band deriving from Watford where at the beginning before they got their first album released, appealed to a small and niche audience. Their music videos were fairly basic as the filming was as if the performance was live. I thought it would be a good idea to follow the codes and conventions of this groups pop promos as our band is a relatively small unknown band who appeal to a niche audience. The use of constantly moving and shaky shots were used similar to those of the pop promo from the gallows below, the whole reason for doing this in our pop promo is to hype up the video and to express the energy to the audience, it also shows a representation of the band members, showing that they put a lot of energy into their performance. Also alike the pop promo from the gallows below, the brightness and contrast has been edited to show an irregular natural colour; it appears that the brightness has been brightened because you notice that band member skin colour is very irregular and pale. We decided to do the contrary and make the video darker but yet an increase in contrast, this was to make it darker but yet sharpen's the video, thus making it fairly hard to distinguish objects and maybe even some of the band members.

We have included all these conventions mentioned in our video. Lip-syncing was used for both verses in the song so that the lead singer was exploited so that our audience can relate to the band/lead singer/pop promo when they hear the song. We didn’t want to use the lead singer throughout the whole pop promo as this would be boring and the rest of the band and instruments have to be involved too. A constant variety of shots were used throughout, especially when the camera was focused on the lead singer, we had shots consisting of close-ups, extreme close-ups, mid shots, overhead shots and hand held shots whilst moving.

The target audience is fairly obvious by the type and genre of song as well as the fashion wear that the band are wearing, that being dark clothing, tank tops, t-shirts with rock designs on them, chequered hoodies, chequered shirts, baggy jeans, beanies, postman pat jumper and dark plain polo shirts, skater shoes, chequered flats not to mention the tattoos that the lead singer has.

The only convention we challenged was that we didn't use any choreography or back up dancers in the video. This was purely because we wanted the band to be the main focus and for the video to appear as if it was recorded live even though some of the footage was from a live gig.

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

I think our ancillary texts and main product as a combination are very effective. A magazine advert was made as well as a CD cover to promote the song/pop promo. This CD cover consists of all sides, front, back and both sides of the inside. All three of these media texts are interlinked intentionally so that one can be related to another without the use of words. The same text was used for both the album cover and the magazine advert, this also helps the audience relate from one to another. In order to relate each piece of media to another we used a certain image on each, that being of the band stood next to some windows, this image was darkened so much so that you couldn’t see the band clearly, this was to suit the genre. We used quotes from magazines that we would expect our target market to read (this being Kerrang! and NME).

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The feedback we got from our target audience about our pop promo was very good, we asked about their thoughts on the pop promo: good, bad or neutral. The most common response that we received was about the pace of the editing and the variety of camera shots and that they especially like how the pace was sped up more and more the closer the tension built up in the song for the second verse. The only real downside that a few people mentioned was the fact that there was a lack of other band members within the pop promo and that it would have been nice if they were more involved. The overall feedback was very positive and all I learnt that if there is more than one person in a band or in a group then it is better and more appealing if the whole band are shown often and introduced to the audience in that way.

I also learned from my targeted age group what kinds of stylistics and conventions they like to see in a pop promo for them to be attracted to it and influenced on watching it. So my first question that I asked that regarded to the pop promo was what appeals more to them in a music pop promo, either mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing or special effects, it turns out that almost a third of the people questioned claimed that the editing of the pop promo was the most important as it judges the pace and transitions; what you see. Secondly I wanted to know how my target audience managed to watch music videos, just over half watch them via YouTube and the rest use either TV music channels, Gaming console, Online Music Channel or an MP4 Player. It also turns out after asking my third question on how often does my target audience watch music videos, and the response was quite outstanding, just over 90% watch music videos daily, and under 10% each watch music videos either weekly, monthly or not at all.

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

Research Planning:

To commence with we needed to do basic research for our music video, this meant rooting around to find images, video and text to prove and explain in detail what exactly we were researching and why that certain item. The websites used for these media pieces were YouTube! and Google Images, normally students would use an embedded code to then put onto the blog, but I found an easier option by downloading the video/image and uploading it directly to the blog. Finding most of the media pieces needed was fairly easy as I am fairly experienced in the internet department and know certain ways to find precise things that I am looking for. Once the analysis was finished, I posted the final edit onto YouTube! and onto social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to get some audience feedback, this was a very easy yet efficient way of getting decent feedback.

Construction:

Before we could start with using the Apple Mac’s to do anything, we first needed footage of the band, this meant visiting one of the band members premises and filming on site using DV camera; unfortunately there wasn’t enough light within the premises to get decent footage for the pop promo, so we were lucky that we had taken special high wattage studio lights with us so that we could light it in our own manner and pleasure. Once the footage was all on 6 or 7 tapes we had to capture all of the footage onto the Macs using a FireWire which connected from the DV camera to the Mac tower. We captured all footage to the storage of the Mac tower onto a program called FinalCutPro, this was the software used to edit our pop promo. The program was fairly easy to use, we had a time line where we would place our captured footage on, and cut, crop and change the footage around until we were happy with it, this also gave us the opportunity to use special effects on our footage to create different effects and irregular views. The photos used in the ancillary texts were taken with a digital camera of which we transferred to the Apple Mac and used Photoshop to edit them. Photoshop is an image editor where we could take photos or take still frames from the pop promo and edit them in Photoshop. This also gave us the opportunity to place effects onto the images to create different effects and designs.

Evaluation:

For us to receive external feedback to commence with the pop promo had to be compressed so that it could be published on our blog as well as on YouTube! for us to receive feedback from our target market, this made things easier to monitor because it didn’t mean that we had to surround a Mac to monitor the feedback, it meant that we could have used any PC to monitor what we wanted. As an overall none of this could have been done if it wasn’t for the Internet. This is because we wouldn’t of been able to set up the blog, we wouldn’t of been able to receive the video’s or images needed for research and finally feedback would not have been available because not as many people would have been able to see it.