Rough Cut

Ancillary Task

I have finished the four digipack panels and poster for my ancillary task:

Digipack Front Cover

Digipack inside cover


Digipack middle panel

Digipack back cover


Magazine advert

For my ancillary task, I decided to use a colour scheme of red and black to link all of the panels together, rather than having four seperate images. I think that this has worked well and I am happy with the outcome.

Evaluation

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My music video does, to some extent, challenge the forms and conventions of existing music videos. The most significant aspect of this is the narrative style of my music video, in recent years, the narrative of music video has been played around with quite a lot most famously in Lady Gaga's telephone but also in videos such as Born Free by M.I.A, both of these video have an overdeveloped narrative compared to other music videos and both are making a strong statement about an important issue e.g. feminisim or equality. My music video goes in the complete opposite direction and has a complete lack of narrative, there is only one character and no plotline whatsoever, the video instead features on the themes of change which are rooted in the song that I chose. I am not at all claiming to be the first person to create a conceptual music video but it is unusual to see nowadays in amongst all of the cliched videos featuring scenes of rappers in expensive cars with half naked dancers. By using an unusual narrative technique, it encourages the viewer to engage actively with the video because they have to decode it's meaning, the vagueness of the meaning behind the video also leaves it open to different interpretations than the one I had originally intended, therefore each audience member can take something different from it. I did however find from my audience feedback that many of the viewers did not understand the meaning of the video, although I was dissapointed that people had not fully understood, I wouldn't want to change the narrative too much because making the meaning too obvious would make the audience passive recievers rather than actively engaging with the video.

• How effective is the combination of your product and ancillary texts?

For my ancillary task, I used photos which I had used i my music video, so there was clear links between them, this made it an effective combination because all three items were a complete package rather than three seperate products. I also had a red colour scheme on all items in my ancillary task which helped to link them together.

• What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After reading through my audience feedback, most people that watched my music video said that it was ok to start with but began to get repetetive towards the end, I would agree with this because I did not do enough filming and therefore had to stretch the shots that I did have which meant repeating a lot of my shots. Lots of people also commented on the fact that there is not much variation on the locations in my music video, this was intentional because the focus was meant to be on the character but after seeing the video it is a valid point and I think I should have considered the lack of variety when creating my production work. Another issue which was raised was the lack of narrative, which was again intentional as I was trying to focus on the theme of the song but I don't think it was made clear enough and people didn't quite understand the point of it.

If I was to re-visit my production work then I would definetly do more filming which would allow me to add more variety to the video and keep the viewer intereseted throughout. I would also consider ways in which I could make the theme and narrative aspects of the video a lot clearer so the viewer knew what it was actually about. One person that watched my music video also said that very short film clips would have been more effective than photographs so I would definetely consider trying this idea out.

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

The most helpful tool that I used was the internet because it aided me in many different ways; blogger allowed me to easily organize my work throughout the project which was a great help, I could also use videos and photos to compliment my written work which I could not have done if I had written the work by hand. Video sharing websites such as Youtube and Vimeo were very beneficial in the research stages of my project because they gave me easy acess to existing music videos as well as other A level work, as well as allowing me to upload my own work once it was finished.

The SLR camera was obviously very important because I used it to take photographs which I used to construct both my music video as well as my ancillary task.

To what extent was the intended audience a major factor in the creation of your A2 Advanced Production Portfolio?

When creating media texts, the intended audience should always be considered but it is debatable to what extent the intended audience should influence the final product and whether the final product is a reflection of your own ideas or the audience’s ideas, which is risk you take if you are too heavily influenced by your audience and catering to their idea of a good music video instead of your own.

The song that I chose to do my music video for was by one of my favourite bands and was not the kind of thing that would be in the charts today, I decided to choose a song that I like rather than one which was very popular because I would have difficulty creating a piece to go with a song that I personally did not like. Having said that, people would not watch a music video for a song they didn’t like, so the intended audience is decided based on the song, therefore the audience did not play any role whatsoever in choosing my song and it was instead the audience who were chosen when I picked my song.

When it comes to the narrative of my music video, the audience was more influential. During my audience research I found that most people said they were bored with predictable narrative like love stories etc. and they wanted to see something different, this led to my decision to make my music video more conceptual with no real plot. Although I took into account the audiences views on what made a good or bad music video, when it came to coming up with the actual idea I created the concept based on my own ideas and not what my audience had told me which I think is very important when creating an interesting media text because it helps to avoid clichéd ideas which any member of the public could come up with.

The actual constructing and editing stages of the video is probably where I was most influenced by my audience as this is when the final product would be created, and regardless of the fact that the video was my own concept for a song that I personally liked, it is still a music video and still had to be interesting and enjoyable to watch. This meant that I had to think about whether shots were too long or short or whether I had repeated a shot too often or not, I did not however consider these things quite as much as I should have done because I did end up with too much repetition in my work.

In conclusion, the intended audience did not have a huge influence on my work because although the music video is created for an audience, I dictate who that audience is through the choosing of my song and the product I make is still my own work and nobody else’s, so with the exception of the editing stage, the creative process was not heavily influenced by my intended audience.

Editing

I have started editing the footage that I have and should be finished in 1-2 weeks.