Evaluation
• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product follows some conventions but also it challenges and changes them to create something unique and original. Firstly, the convention it follows for the rap genre is having a big group of ‘gangsters’ rapping, in a way we followed the convention but instead of lip-syncing every part of the rap we made the gang wear masks. Masks have been used in music videos before but not many rap videos. There is a video that includes masks by slipknot, however slipknot is a heavy metal band and the opposite spectrum of genre to rap. In the video that is the official version of our instrumental over our track there is a lot of scenes of partying and people dancing and bopping to the music. This is following the conventions of a rap video with very similar arm movements in a specific hip hop way of dancing. We challenge some codes of the convention by not having any microphones of the rapper rapping and never seeing any faces as they are all in masks.
• How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I think the digipak and the advert work really well with our main product, it has a perfect synergy of products that both complement each other really well in our chosen field of genre. With the advert carefully worded to represent the product we have launched it offers a good amount of knowledge for the audience to have an idea of what we are presenting. The digipak also offers a generous amount of information whilst being able to keep the surprises hidden in order to coax a customer into buying it.
• What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We showed a rough cut to a class of media students in order to hear some feedback. They were very helpful with their criticisms, allowing us to see the good and bad points. Firstly, the good points were the use of effects in our video. One person said “I really like some of the fades and effects, it creates a really nice mood and feel to the atmosphere of the video.” However there were some other points made such as some shots were too long and some transitions looked out of place. This feedback gave us a great deal of improvements that we were able to make. For example, in the scene of the trolley walking towards the camera there was no black flickering effect and it felt uncomfortable and too long to watch. Therefore adding the effect made it flow much better with the song and decreased the distance very slightly toward a professional video.
• How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and
Evaluation stages?
Newly found media technologies were massively helpful in the whole process of constructing a product. Final cut pro gave us a good amount of creative control with next to no limitations. The editing software was perfect in creating effects, dissolves and transitions in order to give our video fluidity. Furthermore, the software allowed us to put certain parts of footage in slow motion and also to speed up scenes, even reversing some gave it more creativity. In many shots we have saturated the colour which gives the viewing experience a nice twist.
Media technologies also helped me in the research and planning of our product with sites such as YouTube being the perfect library of thousands upon thousands of music videos, which we could then analyse. One of the music videos that our product is loosely based on as far as the masks go is Even the most simplest of technologies helped us with the research with our location shots and also photos needed for our digipak and advert.
