Evaluation by: Soraya Cavalcanti

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

Our chosen band (Kings of Spain) is a conventional product for the fact that it is a 'boy and girl' narrative. However we done it quite differently. We kept the indie style in the music video. For example the band members and our actors was wearing casual, simple clothes, hardly any make up, it was totally non-glamorous. As the theorist Kermode says, critics might not like or understand the ideology we are trying to represent but indie rock fans will totally understand and enjoy. The song is very energetic and fast beat, we thought we would totally be able to make a interesting and entertaining music video out of it.
We researched and watched so many different music videos of all genres especially alternative rock to get as many idea as we could and get creative. We tried our best to get the scenes in the right time with the lyrics. Our group tried our best to get the video looking very professional.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

It is very effective for the fact that the poster and CD cover we used had their original logo, and we also used real pictures of them. We made it very simple to keep the indie rock style to it and made it in a quite pop art style. We used photoshop for the the CD cover and poster.
We made it look very professional, adding contact number, website, even though it is not real. We also used different fonts and attractive colours to make it appealing and interesting. We made it and re-made it so many times to make sure we all was satisfied with it. It was a very creative task that we also had to get audience feedback from it to make sure it was up to standard.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback for us was very important because we wanted to make sure it would be enjoyable and entertaining. Our group wasn't sure of doing a 'girl and boy' narrative so that was kind of tricky for us. So we decided to make a few rough cuts to see the audience reactions and opinions. Our target audience are the young adults, so chose two teenagers to play the narrative part and obviously the band members who are obviously quite older. So already have done that we are able to attract audience of both those ages. At the beginning of our production we did get quite a few of negative feedback, but it was good because we were able to improve. What the people most enjoyed in our music video was how we used the actual original band playing in a studio then playing live and mixing it really well with a narrative. It engaged and entertained people. But then we went further and tryed to fit in some more idea to make it different and follow the fast beat of the music. It was then that we had the idea of using bright strobe light. There is a very repetitive part of the song that says:"I know what I want and its you" So we wrote it on pieces of paper with the light flickering over it. We thought it was great!
And it also made sense and linked with the title of the song "Flick the switch".
So over all we had a very positive feedback from our audience and also from the band.

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

We obviously used a lot of many kinds of technology for our whole production. Such as cameras for the recording of our music video, computer programs such as photoshop, imovie... and obviously the Internet witch was our main source for research. The blogger is where we are keeping all of our works and information, it's our work diary online.
We used two different programs to edit our music video, Final Cut Pro 7 and iMovie 09. We found the Final Cut Pro 7 easier to use because we could match it well the lyrics and the images e.g. lip syncing. The iMovie 09 is too basic for what we wanted to do.
We used the JVC HD camera for the recording and it was quite practical for files transfers.
Internet was where we could just seat and research instead of going out in the street looking for information. So it obviously same us a lot of time. Photoshop was very useful for our CD cover and Poster production. All of this brings me the idea of David Gauntlett because he has a theory that 'consumers would become the producers'.