Evaluation of Main task and Preliminary Tasks

In the research and planning stages, I was very motivated in creating a strict plan so that I would get all the work done by the deadlines provided. I had made a plan of my time for all 3 tasks set, bearing in mind that I could not use pinnacle at home, because I don’t have it on our home computer. I made lots of plans regarding filming the scenes, because I thought that the actresses I used had been good enough to give me their time, I must use it wisely. The plans of time definitely stood me in good stead, as on the plan for the music video, I established all what would be needed for the highest grade possible. This way I could keep focus and on track of the task set. The research I conducted in all 3 tasks was I thought the maximum; I did loads so that I was prepared to produce 3 products that would fit in with contemporary music artists and help me identify some of the conventions that I would develop. The research then was evaluated into notes which I then made use of by saying how it has or hasn’t influenced me. For example the videos by Pink and Alexandra Burke influenced me how I would express sadness in a music video - using conventions such as candles, and scenes in black and white. Hallelujah by Alexandra Burke especially influenced me because the format of the video was very much past and present - with flashbacks often in black and white. I therefore followed a similar format when creating my music video - as the studio singing scene narrated the flashback scenes.

Below is a link to the Hallelujah musi video sung by Alexandra Burke

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb-K2tXWK4w

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real products?
I think that for all three of my final products, they all fit in with contemporary society. They follow existing trends and are nowhere near revolutionary, a band like the one I am promoting will be in business terms a “cash cow”, this is because they are reliable and audiences will take to them, they wouldn’t become global superstars like Madonna or Michael Jackson and make multi-billions of pounds. I think that the Music Video especially targets all audiences and in some ways does challenge existing media, as much of today’s song lyrics are about relationships and love, some even of a sexual nature. I have used conventions from the music video from Alexandra Burke, when there is the use of candles on the floor when she is singing. However, I couldn't afford the amount of candles that is used in her video - and it would also take a long time to light them all! I did develop this convention - by using a large candle, melting down as a metaphor for 'Lucy' the actress who dies of cancer in the video. The a link to the Hallelujah is embedded above.

How effective is the combination of your main product and anillary trexts?
I think that all 3 of my products combine very well. Reasons for this include the colour schemes, the band image and the story. The colour schemes used are predominantly black, yellow and pink; this is in both the webpage and the CD cover, mainly used to show girlyness (pink) but quality (gold) and grief (black). In similarity, the music video is set in a black studio; this represents grief, as the story is about memories of someone who has died. The beginning of the video shows a white background with black text, I was going to make this yellow and pink – but thought those colours were to fun and would put the audience in a confused mind set – as they are reading about cancer, but seeing fun colours, that is why I used white and black, so that the white would resemble peace, and the black would resemble the grief that is still there. The band image is the same throughout all the 3 products. They are shown as fun loving, and just normal girls. The image of the group on the CD cover and webpage shows them “glamorous”, yet covered up! This is supposed to be the group’s unique selling point, as they are “good girls” and not jezebels. Finally the story is interviewed throughout all the 3 products, the music video bases heavily on an interpretivist’s level, as it is about an individual story. However the CD and Webpage include more personal messages to include the audiences –“have you been affected by cancer?” This makes the audience intertwined into the cancer story, if I were promoting the girl band in real life, then I would expect a mini moral panic to be created to gain as much publicity as possible to get everyone talking about the cancer issue.

What have you learned from Audience Feedback?
I did use lots of audience feedback, as I initially did a survey and asked 6 relevant questionnaires to a sample of school students and teachers in my school. I though that the sample size was good, and the people were of the expected target audience 12-18, although the older participants gave better advice to me. I found that the younger participants gave false answers – just because they had copied their friends. This helped me to appreciate the importance of reliable data. I then correlated the results into graphs which I then analysed. I found that most of the

results questionnaires were helpful, but the most impact was from my friends who don’t do media studies and saw my progress and gave me hints and tips in order to improve. 3 of my friends do A level art, so I found this useful when I was creating my CD package and Webpage.
I have learnt the importance of researching and constantly reviewing the needs of a target audience. Also, the suggestions on acting on their constructive criticism so that the end products meet their needs and will be a success.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Media technology I used included Pinnacle, Dream weaver and Photoshop, along with Movie Maker and a Camcorder. I used dream weaver to create my webpage, I was able to create a page with little or no HTML scripting skills. I used cascading style sheets, each of them linked to the webpage. I had to ensure that all my images were the size that I wanted them to be on the webpage before saving them in one folder which also contained any sound or video files I wanted embedding into my front page. Once my front page was complete, I uploaded my WebPages to an ISP along with any image, video or music files that I had included on the pages. When I viewed my page on line, at first I discovered that there was a red cross in some boxes, this is because I had not put the images in the correct folder, I then uploaded the missing images and put them in my “images” folder, where they could then be uploaded.

I used Adobe Photoshop for my CD cover, inside and back, this enabled me to produce a higher quality CD cover – as I could do much more to the images, such as cropping them down and drawing around them. I found this relatively easy to use, as the plans I had drawn up were not overly difficult, and I had used it last year in my AS media coursework, and have used it to make posters for the schools production play last July.

I used Pinnacle to upload and edit my music video, I filmed the scenes, and because my planning was sufficient, I knew exactly how long each scene needed to be. I therefore was able to create the music video in adequate time. My main problem with Pinnacle was that when I came to “make movie” there were errors with some of my scenes. This completely disrupted my timetable. The schools IT technician was trying to find out all sorts of ways to solve the problem, but in the end I simply had to recapture the scenes from my Camera, then edit the back into the film. One of the hardest parts of creating the movie was matching the song to actresses lip movements so that they were synchronised. Pinnacle allowed me to do this well but in odd places it is out of sync. I used movie maker to create the anamatic, which was relatively easy and didn’t take me long.

Overall I feel that I have created a set of products that relate to an interested audience and that I have progressed significantly in my use of ICT and my understanding of the elements / features of different forums of media.

Music Video

Evaluation of Webpage

Webpage Evaluation

I think that my webpage, does not develop existing media forms. I have been influenced by the webpages from Girls Aloud and The Saturdays, I think that because both these girl bands have been hugely successful, then there could be clearly a gap in the market for another one.
I did the same amount of audience feedback as I did for my CD project, I followed the same plan. I carried out a questionnaire before and a questionnaire after, the before one was to see what audiences would expect to be on a webpage from their point of view, and the after one was to see what audiences thought about the webpage, and if any amendments needed doing.
From all the media technologies I have used throughout this coursework, I found Dream Weaver, which we used for the webpage extremely frustrating. Everything was just that much more complicated and took me more time than I had expected. Using my plan, when things were going great and I was ahead of schedule – I seemed to slack of – so that I would be back on schedule, instead of keeping working ahead of pace, so that I would have spare time if I were to come across anything that would take me more time than I thought. Therefore, I should have kept working at an even pace, instead of slacking off, so that when it came to produce the actual webpage, I could have had plenty of time to do it. I think that the 3 products all link, the webpage does this especially well. This is because on the webpage there is the CD front cover and the music video all together, linking them all.

Webpage

Webpage

Please click the link below to go onto my Webpage;

My Website Pages


Storyboards

I have done 3 composition plans, and have developed each one as I have gone on from the previous.
The first composition I drew up was very straightforward and didn’t have much extra detail on. For example, the picture of the band is too big, this is good that there is a picture of the band on but I think because it was so big, it took attention away from other items on the page which were more important – such as the music video. I was happy with the navigation bar at the top of the page; it contained links to all pages that would be necessary on a website. A further criticism of this webpage is that the colours are only yellow and black, on the CD front and back cover, there is also pink text. Therefore in order for the 3 media pieces to fit together, they must follow the same pattern of colours. This webpage has been hugely inspired by the one I looked at by Girls Aloud, this is maybe too much so, as I have not looked at other webpages in the same detail. I found that the first composition did not include anything overly exciting, it was simply boring and pictures took up the majority of the space. I did like the navigation bar at the top of the page, lots of other webpages have this at the very top, and I thought it was functional to do the same. This and the name of the band at the top of the page has been the same throughout all compositions. I have a picture of the band at the top, but in the early compositions it was rather large, and when I had created this on the computer, it contributed to a whole screen space – and therefore was no indication for audiences to scroll down for more info. That is why I have made the image smaller, and brought up the rest of the content further up. I have also decided that because the band are new, there needs to be some information about them as a group, and individuals somewhere on the page – so that audiences can get to know the group. As the music video is an emotional story about cancer, there needs to be a link on the webpage so that audiences can understand more about why the band have chosen to do a song about that issue, and have profits go to charity. I will also need some copyright of some sort to send to Cancer Research UK as I am intending on using the logo on the page. Also on the page are the music video, and the CD front cover, this webpage links the 3 together. Also on the final composition is an idea taken from most other music artist webpages, I see it as a “space filler” and also gets to see the band in a more personal level. It is a news box, which lets audiences find out stories about the band – I would aim to update this regularly if it were real. I have written some articles about 2 band members, and intend to get another picture of them. The colours used are matching to the CD cover and back – Black, Gold and Pink. I think that this is a good combination because the Gold emphasises quality, Pink emphasises “girliness” and the Black is a solid background colour which girl group Girls Aloud have used on their webpage.

Composition 1


Composition 2

Composition 3

These are all just rough ideas for myself, so that i know what will go where - so i haven't gone into extreme detail on each of the plans.

Questionnairre to Target Audience

As I did for my CD cover and Music Video, I have created a questionairre into my target audience to see what current expectations are of websites. Below is a completed questionnaire;

QUESTIONNAIRE INSERT

Below are some graphs to show findings from the questionnairre's;

Questionnaire Evaluation

I carried out a Questionnaire to a sample of 50 people at my school. They were either staff or students of different ages. Although, as I feel that the music industry targets heavily on the youth, then I would proportion my sample to reflect this ratio. The age range with the largest number of participants was the group 15-18 – mainly because this group was the easiest to get hold of and secondly because I intend the music to target them especially. I asked the question “how often do you surf the internet” because those who would surf the internet most would be able to give fully justified opinions of WebPages. I then asked a more direct question - “How often have you visited WebPages of contemporary music artists?” The results from this question was what I would expect, around half of the participants visit these webpages now and again – and most likely the same ones. Therefore from this I can conclude that webpages are important as it is a base for a band or artist to supply information. I inserted a question that would give me qualitative data so that the participant could get across their own views, rather than ticking a box which is very closed and only gives correlational information. I liked to read Question 6 on this questionnaire so that I could get a general feel of what participants expect to be on a website. Many of the responses were similar, and thought that a website should have a music video from the band available, song lyrics, competitions and concert dates available so that they can buy tickets to see the band. This questionnaire has proved helpful in that I can now go on and design the webpage knowing what my target audience expects from it.

I looked at a variety of different artists webpages. This is so that when I come to making my own webpage I can have a justified opinion of what contemporary Music Artist webpages are like.

After evaluating these WebPages, it is clear that there are many similarities between the pages. All include the band/artists name – with all except Sugababes including a picture of the band/artist itself. All included a row of links to other pages at either the top or bottom of the page. Colour schemes are also important, because this page markets the band – it seems as though pink, black and gold are female colours, and grey blue and white are male colours. As my bands are females, it would make sense to follow this pattern and involve gold and pink colours. I will also use images of my band as that is what has been done in these pages. I like the girls aloud pictures of them all at the top of the page – I think this gives them a “Goddess” status and there hair and make up is perfect. Reoccurring things from the pages are; up to date news of the band, tour dates, images of the band and links to buy the albums and singles from the band.

Below is a plan of how I intend to use my time in order to get my Webpage done and finished.

I have done a plan so that once I have done a task, then I can tick it off in the "DONE" column.