Darcy Sullivan

A2 Media Studies Evaluation Questions

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions from real media

products?How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary texts? What have you learned from your audience

feedback? How did you use new media technologies in the

construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Evaluation Questions:1.

2.3.4.

1. In what ways does your media product use,

develop or challenge forms and conventions from real

media products?

My music video generally tried to uphold the codes and conventions of typical Pop songs because I felt it was important to let the audience know what type of video they were watching as soon as they saw it. The song we chose was off of Rizzle Kicks’ first album Stereo Typical.

As a group we noticed that the most of the songs were representative of young people, this is why we chose a song which represented youth the most.

1. Dreamers2. When I was a youngster

3. Round up4. Down with the trumpets

5. Demolition man6. Prophets (better watch it)

7. Mama do the hump8. Miss Cigarette

9. Traveller’s chant10. Stop with the chatter

11. Homewrecker12. Trouble

13. Learn my lesson14. Even on a rainy day

Comparisons to Rizzle Kicks

Harley and Jordan are dressed up as an Astronaut and a Fireman, representing their ambition when they were younger.

Fireman Secretary Scientist Builder Footballer

We tried to make ours similar to Rizzle Kicks by having people dressed up as different occupations

Our video was similar to Rizzle Kicks as we filmed part of it in a park

We also incorporated a climbing frame in our music video

We changed this bit of the video by becoming what we aspired to be

Lip syncingWe incorporated lip syncing in our music video because it is a typical feature in a music video. Getting the lip syncing in time with the music was harder than we thought it would be. For the scene with Ben and Marios (far right), it was very difficult to get the lip syncing right as Ben didn’t learn the words and we were worried that this would reflect badly in our final product.

Problems with lip syncing

This part of the song was a rap and we decided to put it on a Powerpoint and film the words coming up because it wouldn’t have looked as good it we tried to lip sync and would have made our video look as if it was a bad quality, so we thought it was a good idea to incorporate intertextuality o

link in with Andrew Goodwins theory.

The mis-en-scene

Props we usedFor the opening sequence, we used sweets and counting blocks to spell out ‘When I was a youngster’. We chose sweets and number blocks because they are highly representative of young people/children.

We all dressed up in our old school uniforms to further represent childhood. As a group we felt it was appropriate because it would show the audience that we are pretending to be a different age. We also done this by locating it in a primary school.

Andrew Goodwin’s theory suggests that in music videos, there is a relation between the lyrics and the visuals. We decided to follow this theory in our music video. In the part of the song where it said “These days you can catch me sitting on a bench in the park with a lager and crisps”, we threw in these items to our actor Ben.

Props we used cont...

We got lots of different occupational clothing from places such as our science department, the primary school and from home (parents work clothes).

Me and Frankie were able to use fancy dress clothes from the primary we filmed at to represent what children aspire to be when they are older. Andrew wore his rugby kit and Phalen wore his prom suit to look like a business man.

Camera angles Camera angles and shots are crucial in any media text as it is able to tell a story and reflect emotions of different characters. After watching previous music videos, I felt that it was important to incorporate as many different camera angles into our music video to ensure we get the best results, and also show that I am versatile when it comes to filming.

Mid Shot Long Shot Extreme Close Up

Low Shot Close Up Over Head Shot

The Narrative

• The narrative is a combination of the story and the plot. It is the order of what happens and how it happens.

• There are linear and non linear narratives. A linear narrative is a narrative that works with the story and the plot working in chronological order. A non linear narrative is when the narrative doesn’t work in chronological order. EG. Flashbacks

• My music video is non linear as there is no clear story line. We thought that as it is a song representing childhood, there was no need for it to be linear.

Narrative TheoriesVLADIMIR PROPP

Russian critic & literary theoristAnalysed over 100 fairytales in the 1920's

Proposed that it was possible to classify the characters and their actions into clearly defined roles and function.EG. Star Wars fits Propps model precisely, but a significant number of more recent films such as Pulp Fiction do

not.

Propp's Character Roles.• The Hero (seeks something)• The Villain (opposes the hero)

• The Donor (helps the hero by providing a magic object)• The Dispatcher (sends the hero on his way)

• The False Hero (falsly assuming the role of the hero)• The Helper (gives support to the hero)

• The Princess (needs protection from the villain)• Her Father

We didn’t use Propp’s theory in our music video as we very there wasn’t a clear story or characters, so there was no opportunity to have any character roles.

CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS

Social anthropologist Studied myths of tribal cultures

Examined how stories unconsciously reflect the values, beliefs & myths of cultureUsually expressed in binary oppositions

A conflict between two qualities or termsE.G. 1970's Western films

WEAK - STRONGCHRISTIAN - PAGAN

DOMESTIC - SAVAGE

In our ‘When I was a youngster’ music video, we used binary opposites to some extent such as the transition from young to old and growing up.

ANDREW GOODWIN

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics. e.g. stage performance in metal videos, dance routine for boy/girl band, aspiration in Hip Hop.(Swedish House Mafia – Don’t You Worry Child)

2. Relationship between lyrics and visuals. The lyrics are represented with images (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting)

3. There is a relationship between music and visuals. Tone and atmosphere of the visuals reflects that of the music (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting)

4. Demands of the record label includes need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work. Includes CU's of artist, iconography, visual trademarks.

5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, mirrors, stages, telescopes etc.)

6. Often intertextual reference to films, TV programmes, other music videos etc. (Katy Perry - California Girls. Board Game.)

We used Andrew Goodwin’s theory of how the images link with the lyrics.

Intertextuality Within MediaIntertextuality refers to the relationship that exists between different texts. In media, this refers to different types of meduim being incorporated into our media text.

One element of intertextuality in our music video come in the for of photographs. We not only used photos of ourselves as children, we also took still shots of the photographs on a white board to make it look like a video.

We also used Powerpoint on the interactive white board at school to aid our music video because we thought it was more effective to use this rather than lip syncing.

3. What have you learned from your

audience feedback?

Audience feedback from our questionnaire

• We asked 14 people to complete our questionnaire and we found that the group we

wanted to aim it to was early teens to about late 30’s. We understand that this is a very wide range of people to aim it at, the lyrics mean that all the people in this age range

would be able to relate to the lyrics.

QUESTION 1 – Are you male or female?We felt this was an appropriate starting question in order

to establish who our main target audience was so we distributed them fairly evenly.

We ended up having a total of 8 males and 6 females.

QUESTION 2 – How old are you?The majority of people we asked were aged between 15-17, however we asked other age ranges to get a various different views on music videos.

QUESTION 3 – What is your favorite genre of music?

Most of the people who completed the questionnaire said that they preferred to listen to Pop music, which is why we chose the

song ‘When I was a youngster’ as the music video we were going to reproduce. This is because we knew that we couldn’t go wrong if we chose this genre as it was most suited to our target

audience.

QUESTION 4 – What do you expect from a music video?

In order to get an idea of what to incorporate into our music video, and the most popular answer was relation

to lyrics so most of the video relates to the lyrics in some way.

QUESTION 5 – Do you prefer dance routines or story lines?

As there vote was nearly split in half, we decided to incorporate both dancing and a vague story

line into our music video. The story line was about young peoples ambitions when they are younger, and their life of fun and enjoyment.

QUESTION 6 – Do you watch independent or mainstream videos

This questions would let us know what song to choose because if the people we asked

preferred independent music, we would have chosen a different song

QUESTION 7 – Would you watch a remake of a mainstream video created by A-Level students?

We thought it was important to know if people would watch our remake of a mainstream video, and luckily most

people said they would.

Overall thoughts on audience feedback

I think that audience research was a very important factor when considering what music video to do because if we chose a song that our target audience

didn’t like, then it wouldn’t be very successful.

I decided to get some audience feedback via twitter and text message because I think that it would be very helpful for me if I wanted to improve. Looking back at the audience research, it was apparent that our choice of

location and the idea of being a ‘youngster’ was very popular with our target audience.

Audience response

4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and

research, planning and evaluation stages?

We used YouTube to look at other music videos and find common codes and conventions of pop music. We also used YouTube to look at the history of music videos and was able to compare how times have changed.

We used this camera because we had used it last year in our thriller and we really impressed with the results. It was really easy to use and we were able to film without the pressure of our school asking for the camera back. We were able to do it in our own time. We also used this camera to take photos for the opening sequence of our video.

iMac – we used the iMac at the start of filming because it was the only thing we could edit our video on, however Frankie got a Macbook Pro for Christmas so we started using this

Macbook Pro - we used the Macbook Pro for the duration of our time editing. It was really simple to use and was also convenient because we could edit out of school hours as we could just go to Frankies house to use the laptop instead of only being able to edit in lessons.

iMovie – It was much easier to use iMovie this year because we already had experience using it when we were editing our thriller so we knew what we were doing.

Adobe Fireworks – we used Adobe Fireworks to edit our photos for our digi packs. As we had never used it before, we thought it was quite difficult at first, but we soon got to grips with it.

I used blogger throughout the year to record the process of our advanced portfolio. It includes things such as what song to choose, the creation of our group, group problems, changing and planning of ideas. I felt that keeping a blog was very helpful in the making of our music video because I was able to mark my progress and tracks everything I have done.

The Internet

The internet was a crucial part in the creation of our media product . We were able to research different music videos and compare Rizzle Kicks’ music videos with eachother. We also researched previous music videos and were able to see he development of music videos over time.

Websites such as Slideshare and Scribd allowed me to put word documents and powerpoint

presentations onto my blog quickly and easily.

My blog...My blog URL

http://darcymusiccoursework.blogspot.co.uk/