Question 3. What have you learned from your audience feedback

An important way of learning from your mistakes and how to improve my work is through audience feedback.

In this blog I am going to show my targets audiences' reactions to my music video and their thoughts and opinions. I am going to ask them varying questions to maximize the feedback I receive.

When looking at peoples feedback I am going to be applying the appropriate theories to understand their feedback fully.



The first form of feedback that I received was from my media studies class where we watched everyone's media production and we made appropriate comments on their work. These are their comments and thoughts of our media product:


Our second form of feedback come in the response of our teacher. I asked him what his general thoughts of our music video was and his response "I found that the start of the music video was just showing a guy following a girl, it wasn't till the second half of the music video that I didn't engage in the 'low key' feel"
Using the uses and gratifications theory; in the first half of the video he was looking for the need of Diversion and Personal Identity to be gratified through my media product. but this need was not being gratified till the second half of the music video, where the music video engaged the audience through humor and antics. This engagement allows the audience to compare the contrasts to their own life, gratifying Personal Identity. It also allows the view to be diverted from their own life through laughter and enjoyment gratifying their need for Escapism.

Our teacher also Picked up on the mise-en-scene of the music video, he said "I also thought that the mise-en-scene could be a bit more seedy, it could be a bit more grungy. The look as if the main character actually smells."
This would allow the audience to engage in the music video's settings more intensely.

He also said, "The lip syncing broke the engagement with the music video because it was off in places."
From the viewers point of view I understood that it was disappointing for the lip syncing to be off but due to technical limitation (mentioned in question 4) only so much was possible. While our hard work is put in by trying to engage the audience into the music video it is spoiled by the lip syncing, breaking their engagement as a result.

I also asked one of my friends that likes similar types of music such as Wheatus - Teenage Dirtbag. His response to our music video was - "Overall I liked the music video, there are different areas that could be imporoved such as the lip syncing."
I ask how it made him feel and what his view towards Stalkers and 'creeps' were, and he replied "before I saw this video I thought that stalkers were horriable creepy people that don't have a life, now I have seen this video it has made me keep the same thoughts but I have sympathised for the character at points of the music video like the second verse where he is being comforted by his friend and he becomes frustrated with him." I then asked him if he found it comical although he was sympathising for the character, he said "yes, I mostly found it funny rather than sympathised for the character" This shows the demonstration of the cultural studies approach theory as he is showing a preferred reading by reading the text as it is supposed to be. Our values are supposed to show the neglect that the character is recieving but the comedy of what is happening to him and the things he is doing is supposed to be dominant.

Question 4. Technology

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

Technology was a key to our media production with out it our project would have been impossible, but modern technologies helped aid us to make a professional looking music video.

The technology at our disposal was largely limited in contrast to professional directors.

Our technology was capped at:

Low budget video camera (Panasonic Camcorder)

Adobe premiere pro 2.0

Tripod

Lighting kits

DSLR

Adobe Photoshop CS2

This limited our abilities to pull of certain shot effectively enough. Meaning that we did not have the equipment to perform tracking shots professionally, if we decided to take these shots it would have to be hand held.

Other shots were also limited like point of view shots as we did not have access to a point of view harness which would of aided us to perform this shot practically and professionally. This left us with the mature look of a shaky hand held look.

Also with regards to the camera technology professional camera were non-attainable for us as the only cameras available at our disposal was the college's commercial Panasonic Camcorder. This posed the problem of definition and video quality, this meant that we had to be cautious with the lighting, as if lighting was too dull then image would be too under exposed but if lighting was too bright then glare would spoil the image.

We were also limited by access for filming as permission for filming is compulsory and there were no studios available for our use.

Our skill was also very limiting for us, the use of the editing tools slowed us down as we couldn't always work out ways in which to apply our ideas to the filming using the editing program, this often left us having to ask people and researching.


Professional Directors/video makers would address these problems with further use of technology (of which is not accessible for us, due to budget and accessibility). Just to list a few technologies available to them:

Tracking and trolley for tracking shots - This would mean that they would get a smooth and consistent tracking shot.



Studios - This would widen the possibility of filming locations.



Higher definition Cameras - This would allow more definition and crisper colours and would prevent nasty glares.



Professional lighting/Naturalistic lighting - This would compliment the colouring of the filming and the high definition of the camera.



Point of view harnesses and steadicams - Would provide the video with a more steady and engaging shot. Making the audience believe that it is a real point of view shot.



A production station for editing including a contol board (also professional editor) - This allows quick short cut (on the control board) which means creative idea don't get forgeten over the hassel of messing about with the equipment. The professional editor also means that the specialist can apply his techniques.



Had we been given the chance to use this professional equipment we would have been heavily advantaged. Allowing us to pull of the correct shots and edit it correctly.

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

.The struggle against forms and conventions is one of the most demanding aspects of making a music video. Forms and conventions can be followed or challenged . The way in which the stereotypical conventions of the music genre is broken and challenged is through creativity.

This creativity can be achieved through inspirations.

Inspirations for creativity can come from many places:

Experience

Experiments

Rejections of main stream video's

Books

Films

Paintings

Creativity of brilliant ideas are often though which are not pushed and forced out.

Much of our ideas was accumulated from experiences of rejection.

But most of our ideas came from conventions of the music genre.
These conventions of the music genre laid the basis for our music video, for example the conventions for a music video telling the story about a girl that they want is often the protagonist following the girl.

In order to break forms and conventions in our music video we tried to add concepts that were unexpected in the music genre. One thing we introduced straight away in the music video was the use of stop motion titling.

The use of entropy in our video creates effects on the audience, effecting them to enguage the media text more closely, for example when we see the main character holding candles it creats an entropic theme untill we see the message that reads "I love u". This relieves the audience of their enigmatic thoughts.

Our music video is also unconventional in the way that the main character doesn't get the girl in the end of the music video. In music videos of the same genre and narrative it is conventional for the main character to achieve his goal and get the girl in the end, and perform a "happily ever after" story. But we have challenged this convention by being consistent through the story and make the girl uninterested in him.

McConnell was the found of the life cycles theory. He says that every media text circulates stages within there genre. The stages he quoted that a genre follows is as followed:
Epic
Adventurous Romance
Melodrama
Parody
Apocalypse
Dormant
And back to epic, completing the circle.

Throughout this circulation idea's are being added to existing idea's and creating new genres beneath these existing genres. These constantly forming genres have made identifying genres very hard as they are constantly expanding and there are so many sub genres they could be classed into under the subsidiary genre.

I think that our music video is in the parody stage of the life cycle as it is using the genre and making it comical and the idea's of other music video's are used in a novel way. The biggest example of this in our music video is the use of winegums to propose to the Mel.