Evaluation

1. Evaluation Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Shot 2 – typifies the way a UK hip-hop record label would want an artist to be represented Shot 1- shows a link between my music and the video In the second verse I inserted a tilt up of the entrance of a church to the lyrics ‘only god will let me see the light.’ This shot was deliberately used to create a link between the lyrics of the song and the music video. The shot typifies the way a UK hip-hop record label would want their artist to be represented, as the main product, dressed like an average person, which is something I noticed during my research and planning.

3. Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Shot 3- illustrates how our video uses music genre Shot 4- shows an intertextual reference This shot illustrates how we used the music genre because we include the typical shot of hooded youths in the background, a dark scene which is common in music videos of this genre The title of the song is ‘Everything Will Be Ok’ this being the symbol that I represent, I purposely did this stance as to seem sort of angelic or a symbol of hope.

4. Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Shot 6- demonstrates use of lighting Shot 5- demonstrates use of camera This shot shows a prominent use of camera, especially use of movement. In this shot, which we chopped up and inserted into the video throughout the duration, Icer is choosing to do the ‘right’ thing and turn to good rather than the street. We used a tracking shot to show this This shot shows use of lighting. Lighting is something we purposely didn’t focus on in the video as we wanted a dark video but his shot shows light on top of the church doors, to symbolise that Icer is walking out of the darkness (bad) into the light (good)

5. Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Shot 7&8 – demonstrates use of mise-en-scene Shot 7 shows use of mise-en-scene as it is an establishing shot of the main setting, the church. Shot 8 shows use of mise-en-scene as it is a tracking shot of hooded boys which is the main costume of the boys we used for the video.

6. Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Shot 9 -14 shows that we watched other music videos. This image shows the emotive link between our stimulus video and our video. Like in the stimulus video ‘Icer is sitting on a bench with a solemn look on his face.

7. Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Shot 9 -14 shows that we watched other music videos. These print screens show a link between the stimulus video and our video as we included close ups of myself singing the chorus as Faith Evans does in this song.

8. Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Shot 9 -14 shows that we watched other music videos. These shot show the link between our video and the stimulus video as they both show the entrance of the church in a superior low angle. This is to do with the idea that good triumphs over evil.

9. My Product Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? I followed the convention I found in two of my stimulus covers through the idea of using a close up/medium close up of the artist as the main cover. However I challenged conventions by placing the name of the artist at the very bottom right of the cover. I wanted the cover to have some differences compared to other hip-hop CD covers that often place the artists name. I still think it stands out as it is the largest print and is in a bright colour. The colour is something is picked out from the 2pac cover. The red really stands out so I decided to followed this convention. From the Jay-z cover I took the idea of doing the cover in a greyscale as I thought it just added that element of grit and streets to it, plus it made the writing really stand out. Real Products

10. Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? I followed conventions I found when research and planning by adding links to other pages on my website e.g. ‘home’ and other social network site like twitter and Facebook. This is obviously a good marketing tool so I decided this convention is something to adapt. I also followed conventions by keeping the synergy between my website and CD cover. I challenged conventions by making my webpage really busy with lots of links but still simple and easy to use.

11. Evaluation Evaluation Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product (music video) and ancillary texts (the website & digipak)?

12. Evaluation Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product (music video) and ancillary texts (the website & digipak)?

13. Evaluation Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product (music video) and ancillary texts (the website & digipak)? The combination of my video, digi-pack and website is clear to see through my use of greyscale across the package. I also kept synergy in my package through the red font and red eye look I used for my single covers and website. All the correlating factors combined make my package effective. On the website I added a link to the video and added a photo of the CD cover to show the synergy between the products. This I found was a good way to advertise the other media products. For the website and CD cover I used the same font, colour and style for the word ‘I.C.E.R’ to create an identity for Icer, that this is the font and style his fans will associate with his name. In all the pictures I used for the digi pack and website and the shots I used for the video, he is wearing the same dark kind of clothing which also creates his identity and links each of the media products together very well.

14. Evaluation Evaluation Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

15. Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback? Audience Feed Back; How we got feedback I gathered a lot of my feedback from my blackberry contacts as they are mostly between the ages of 16-21 which is a large chunk of my target audience. Ishmael 18; Male Flora 17; Female Cece 15; Female Jonathan 17; Male Bebe 15; Female Alice 16; Female

16. Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback? Audience Feed Back; How we got feedback I also gathered a lot of my feedback using Facebook as most of my friend are between the ages of 13-21 which is a large chunk of my target audience.

17. Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback? What I learnt; improvements and changes needed… From my feedback I learnt that the concept and moral we were trying to get through to our audience was very clear and effective and we succeeded in the good vs. evil theme we were trying to portray, however the quality of the video brought us down a little. The quality of the camera made it hard for the audience to follow the narrative completely. So if we could do it again we would try to get a better camera next time. Also someone said that we should have included some street life into the video, I think this was helpful feedback as I believe it would add a bit more grit and grime to the video. Lighting was an issue brought up as well but it seems the audience understands why we did this as they understand it was to go with the melancholy theme.

18. Evaluation Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

19. Research & Planning Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Edexcel… When creating our questionnaire results in the research and planning stages we used the programme Microsoft Office Edexcel to create the graphs. Creating a vox pops… When collecting research on the kind of music people aged 13+ listen to, Andrew and I walked around college with a camera and a microphone asking people. Andrew was the camera man and I was the interviewer.

20. Research & Planning Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Using scanners… I had to learn to use scanners when transferring my designs and handwritten coursework. I had never used a scanner before so it was interesting learning how to set up and use one.

21. Research & Planning Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Youtube and other fan sites… When research and planning we visited various hip-hop artists (international and national) fan sites and forums. Youtube was our main source of information, looking at the comments and likes under videos, seeing what people liked and disliked about the videos.

22. Construction Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Using Final Cut Pro To Edit… Andrew and I did the editing of the video. It was very interesting as I had never used it before and had no knowledge of using Final Cut Pro, so I everything I did I learnt from scratch. Andrew did most of the screen grabbing and cutting of the shots and inserted all the choruses on the timeline. I did the verses and all the effects; desaturating, softening, slow motion, and the blink effect. It took us about a week to complete as we could only use the edit suite and equipment at certain times. The whole group put input in where needed, like advice on what shot should be used for a certain lyric etc. On the whole using Final Cut Pro was quite enjoyable as I learnt about something I had no knowledge of previously.

23. Construction Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Filming… As Emmanuel and I were characters in the video a lot of the filming was down to Andrew. However, we each put in some input and ideas of what each shot should be like, the location, where we the lighting and shadows to fall, the camera angles we should use etc. We each had a chance to use the camera and set it up, to give us some experience of working with cameras. Filming took quite a lot of time. We filmed between late December and early January. Reason being is that there were weather problems like snow that meant we were stranded in our houses instead of filming. Time just really wasn’t on our side but we pulled through and did our best to get the video done before the deadline.

24. Construction Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? PhotoShop… I used Adobe Photoshop when editing photos for my CD covers. In Photoshop I learnt how to use the airbrushing tools, how to make his eyes red and how to distort pictures etc. Just from playing about I learnt many things about the programme.

25. Construction Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Illustrator… When creating text for my website and CD covers I used Adobe Illustrator. It was very straightforward and easy to use.

26. Construction Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Dreamweaver… When creating my website I used Adobe Dreamweaver to create links for the website. Again it was an easy programme to get used to and once I learnt how I created links for all my pages.