Evaluation Question Four : What have you learned from your audience feedback? ★

We asked people some questions when our video was half done to see if there was anything they especially liked or disliked about it before we'd finished.

Here are their responses:

Good Things:

- The story was easy to follow

- There were good transitions and liked the fades in/out and the speeding up

- The rain on the camera lens added dramatic effect

-Felt empathy with the character throughout the narrative

-Liked the shots of the guitar

Improvements:

- Some footage was shaky

-You could faintly see the reflection of us filming in the guitar

-The phone shouldn't have been turned towards the camera

Here is a video of our audience feedback about our finished music video.

Afterwards we asked some more people what they thought of the finished video and here are their responses:

Good things:

- Story line was easy to understand

- The match on action shots were effective

- The action matched the pace of the song

- There was good framing and the fades in/out were also successful

Improvements:

- There were some wobbles

We got some people to watch the music video and look at our final print products to see if they thought the were cohesive. Here are our questions:

What's good about the music video and ancillary texts?

- Looks professional, good layout and structure of the poster

- Simple but effective CD cover and inserts

- Visually interesting because of the effects like the stamp effect on the guitar and it looks like they're in a boat which links to the band name

What could be different?

- The background could be more eye-catching

-The colours could be more emphatic but it works as it is

-Capital letter for "November" on the advert

Are the products synergistic?

- Cohesive fonts

- The guitar has been used in the CD cover, and insert and on the advert because it's featured in the music video

- Constant theme

- The photo was used in the music video and on the advert and CD insert, like the guitar and clips of Olly from the video have also been used in these things

Can you tell what genre the music is from the CD cover and advert?

- Yes because of the guitar and the colours

- Conventional love song hinted at by the images that are pinned on the background of the advert such as the photo of a couple holding hands

From doing this audience feedback at different stages it has helped us make decisions about our product before it's too late to change them which then makes the final product better for the target audience. Getting constructive criticism at the end of the project is also good because it shows you what you can improve for next time and makes you notice things about your work that you might not have done before because you were working so closely with it for so long.

Getting good feedback is also important as it shows that the audience understood the project and that it met their needs and was successful in doing so.

Evaluation Question Three : How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? ★

Genre:

Our genre is a hybrid of acoustic and indie and this is known because of the concentration on the vocals and also the guitar and these are conventional of this type of genre. Within our music video, CD cover and advert we included the main iconography of this genre - the guitar on the back of the CD cover and also on the advert and we also chose to have the colours scheme blue as this connotes relaxation and feelings which the songs may be about and by doing this we have adhered conventions.

Institution:

Two in a Boat are acoustic/indie but are also quite mainstream but a company like Sony or Universal are too big as they only stick to the most popular genres and music they know will sell. Sony does have a sub label called Phonogenic which could be appropriate for Two in a Boat as it's independent but still linked to a mainstream company.

Ideology:

The music video and CD cover/inserts have a dominant ideology which is the Implied Behavioural Normalcy in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, where people have the need to 'belong' and this was clearly shown in our music video through the relationship of Ana and Olly.

Representation:

In the music video we represent both genders, however Olly is the one that has done something wrong and therefore has to apologise whereas Ana is the innocent character who winds up back with the boy because she forgives him. Both Ana and Olly are between 17 and 19 years old and this is the age of the target audience which is why the video will be appealing to them as hopefully they'll be able to relate to the issues in the video.
The heterosexual nature of Ana and Olly's relationship is clearly portrayed in the video and we chose this type of storyline because it would affect most people this way but even if some of the audience were in same sex relationship they can still relate to the issues dealt with in the video and i think this is the most important message.

Laura Mulvey, a feminist theorist has two main modes - either Voyeuristic (seeing women as 'whores') or fetishistic (seeing women as 'Madonnas'). In our music video neither of these theories have been applied as we wanted to have as equal an relationship as possible. This was shown in the music video but also in the CD cover, inserts and the advert through the images of the couple together but also having one of each of them alone so that none has more empathy than the other.

The combination of our music video and ancillary texts have worked well together as a constant atmosphere has been maintained and are clearly synergistic. The main symbols of our video are the guitar which has been used on the back cover on an insert and on the advert. The colour of the CD cover and inserts create a constant theme which is the same in the video too.

Complete Music Video ★

This is our finished music video of Ain't That Easy by Two in a Boat.

We included match on action shots like when Ana was walking through the doors, panning for the view of the city, a variety of shots including long, mid and close-up as well as some experimental shots, like when we were filming Olly from different angles. We also used fades in and out and the speeding up of time.

Our inspiration from The Plain White T's video Hey There Delilah has influenced our decisions when filming and editing ours and we hope that this can be seen when watching it. Our target audience feedback was positive and we hope to have achieved a music video that Two in a Boat could use.

Wordle ★

This shows the important words i've used most on my blog :)

The Final Print Products ★

Here are our finished print products - the magazine advert, CD cover (front and back) and four inserts.

We used an image of wood for the background of this advert as we thought it represented the genre well because it has connotations of nature and boats and these were the images we wanted to create. We used photos of the instruments used in the band instead of having an image of the band as this was more generic, then we also chose three images from the music video which we thought portrayed the genre and narrative of the song to synergise with the advert as well.

This is our CD cover front and back. The front shows an image of Olly and Ana stood on a boat which denotes the name of the band "Two in a Boat" but also follows the narrative. We changed the colour of the image to a blue hue which was more generic and we put the title in the bottom right hand corner as it's in the audiences eyeline. The title is black so that it is visable but doesn't distract from the image.
The back cover has the same image of the wood as the advert but it's the other way round, we used the same image of the guitar as well but changed it in photoshop to a "stamp" which is more modern and fitted better with the colour scheme and the whistful fonts. We also included the web address so that fans could access more information about the band.

This is also the same wood image as the background for our first insert. We then placed Olly infront of this wood to make it look like he was leaning against it in a relaxed "lovelorn" way, which relates to the genre of the music and also the lyrics and narrative of the song. We put the names of the song in the insert as well, which is a conventional thing to do and they're in the same font as the writing on the front cover. We also included who played what instruments within Two in a Boat and also where the CD was produced, also following the conventions of CD covers.

The second insert shoes Ana and Olly holding hands, which also converges with the music video. We chose to have this image blurred as we felt the solid image was too harsh for the genre and wouldn't fit with the atmosphere of the other inserts and covers. The close-up of the hands is a symbolic representation of the narrative in the video and so this is then connoted through this image, even without hearing the song.

The third insert has an image of Olly playing the guitar in a close-up, cutting off his legs and head which then focuses the eye on the guitar which is the whole idea of the song. We also changed this to the same blue hue that was featured on the front cover as this was synergy between the two images and again, it represented the genre and narrative. We included the lyrics because with songs of this genre it's all about lyrics so we thought that people may want to see them written down so they could express their feelings of them to other people, perhaps through facebook or twitter status updates. The lyrics are in the same font used on the other inserts/covers and placed in a central allignment as this is a natural way for eyes to move down the page, and it also fits in with the relaxed, chilled ambience.

The fourth and final image is of Ana, at the start of the music video when she's crying. We changed this image to the "stamp" effect that the guitar on the front of the CD cover had as this tied the two images together and made the image more interesting and unique to look at. As it's cartoon-like it reminds me of the Juno film credits which feature images similar to this one, and the music in Juno is also similar to that of Two in a Boat, which links to similar target audiences. We also decided to make this image blue too which tied all the images together and made it feel like a proper complete print project.

Before and After Photos:

Before -------> After

To change this image we altered the contrast and brightness which made it stand out more and gave warmth to the photograph which is why we used it at the end of the music video to conclude the narrative in the traditional, archetypal "happily ever after" way.

Before -------> After

For this image we cropped the image with the magic wand tool in Photoshop and changed the colour to complement the background and also changed it to a stamp effect which fitted better with our acoustic genre and appealed more to our target audience as it looks like pop art.

Evaluation Question Two : How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? ★

Research and Planning:

In the research and planning stages we used website including YouTube for watching music videos and getting screen shots, Google for images of CD covers and adverts that may apply to our genre, Wikipedia for information about our genre and artists. We also used paint for putting the images in a format that Blogger would accept and Microsoft Word for creating pie charts of our audience research and for experimenting with an idea for our advert.

Construction:

During construction we used still cameras for taking pictures of us filming and also for images that we could use for our CD cover and advert. We used camcorders for filming our music video and we also took some screen shots of footage from these. iMovie was used to upload our footage and enabled us to edit and complete our video, we also used iTunes for uploading our song which we then imported to iMovie. We also used a Mac laptop which we used for playing the song when filming Olly so that he played in time to the actual track we're using. We also used photoshop for designing and making our CD cover and our advert.

Evaluation:

We used Blogger in the evaluation process for uploading peoples responses to our music video and we also used YouTube for putting our music video on the website so that we could get it on our blogs. We also filmed some of our audience feedback and uploaded this to YouTube as well so that this could also be added to our blogs. We also used iMovie for burning our music video to a disk.


Here some photos we took whilst filming... some are natural ones we took whilst other members of the group were filming and some were more staged for our CD cover and advert.

Filming:

We experimented with many different angles when filming Olly and these include high angle, low angle, shots from the side and extreme close-ups of the guitar or close-ups of Olly's face. All these angles gave a different perspective of the singer and the song and these will be used in a montage effect within the video. We had to re-film these scenes as we felt the background was distracting so we found a plain white room with a mirror which gave a much better effect.


Acting:

These are photos of our actors Ana and Jenny who play "the girl" and one of the girls friends. We had to change the storyboard slightly, so instead of the girl being in her room and tearing up a photograph she's in the toilets at school with a friend ripping up a letter than Olly had previously written. The first picture of the girls shows them hugging after Ana's ripped up the letter and the second shows Ana receiving the text from Olly saying sorry which the leads to her journey to find him. We also filmed a match on action of Ana coming out of the door of the toilets which we'll use in the video.

More photos from filming... and some screen shots :)

The first image shows Ana waiting to cross the road at one point in our video. The bus came at just the right time and so i chose this clip to put as a screen shot as it was coincidental that the bus was there but it was relevant to the scene and it this image especially has a good effect as the bus is blurry meaning you can see the background as well.

The second image is of Olly playing the guitar and i particularly like this view. We did have to re-film a few of these scenes because of background objects (the chairs in this picture) but if we use this one or one similar for the insert or advert we will photoshop a more appropriate background in.

The third image shows Ana crying in the toilet after ripping up the love letter. I thought this image was very prominent as an important part in this scene and gives a clear idea about the emotion in this part of the scene.

Evaluation Question One : In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? ★

How our video USED forms and conventions:

The song we chose is from a genre that is very based about love, and feelings rather than other outside issues such as drugs. We chose to keep our video based on a narrative as almost all videos of this genre are the same and we also wanted to include footage of the artist as our inspirational video Hey There Delilah did. Many other videos do this is as well, such as Colbie Caillat's Falling For You.
Our print products followed generic conventions with things such as the colour which was blue to represent relaxation but also the sadness that is also experienced in the video. The guitar was also featured heavily which conveys the genre of the music and is also a conventional thing to do on adverts and CD covers of this genre like David Ford did.


How our video CHALLENGED forms and conventions:

We challenged some forms and conventions of the CD advert by not having the background as an image of the band as we wanted to have a more 'indie' feel and include a few images from the video for synergy and to give the audience some idea about the video and it's themes.


In my research i looked at music videos of the same or similar genre to the song that my group chose. Our main video was Hey There Delilah by The Plan White T's which included a narrative and footage of the singer. For our video we hope to use and develop this idea and change it into our own creation. There were some effects that the band had, such as the split screen, that we would have liked to have used but our technology didn't have the right software. We overcame this problem by changing our storyboard slightly by having more jump shots between different action to make it seem like it was all happening at the same time. I don't think our music video challenges conventions of this genre's style as it has focus on the narrative and has quite a relaxed, laid-back feel to it which almost all videos of this genre are.


Postmodernism

At the end of our AS Level Media course we started Postmodernism and i created a powerpoint presentation with Ana about the hugely popular TV series, Glee. We discussed the characters and their personalities, the creation of the program, it's influences, it's humour, story lines and of course the music - all of which contribute to the whole issue of postmodernism.

Here are some screen shots from the presentation:

Our music video incorporates postmodern ideas by taking ideas from other music videos such as The Plain White T's and incorporates them into our own production. The idea of the narrative from the girls perspective and the fact that we have montage effects of the singer within our video was inspired by watching their Hey There Delilah video and so created this postmodern effect. We didn't want our video to be too postmodern as we thought that it might distract from the meaning of the song which is important in this genre as there aren't many other distractions to the singers voice.
Within each episode of Glee characters always sing about their feelings, especially in break-ups, as that is easier than talking face to face with someone and this happens in our video as Olly is seen singing about his feelings for Ana. In Glee there is sometimes a montage effect when someone is singing a solo which shows what they're singing about from past experiences or something relating to the song which is also what happens in our video as it shows Ana in between shots of Olly.