Evaluation

I have now completed and finished my project. The brief that I was set was to make a promotion package of the release of on album, to include promo video, together with a cover for its release on DVD and a magazine advertisement for the DVD. To complete this task effectively I have had to understand the conventions of different media texts which include music videos, digipacks and magazine music articles. For my music video analysis I have looked at different media texts and wrote down the conventions that they hold and how well they are put together, edited and presented. I have seen that music videos represent themselves and their audience. This results in a powerful link between the two which in turn will result in the product selling easier. With the understanding of how this has been done and how they are so effective I was able to create my own music video, digipack and magazine music article. This also in turn had to represent the genre that I was using, this was helped by the fact that I made sure the media text that I looked at was the genre that I was looking to adopt.

Above I have stated that I have looked at different media texts so that I get a good understanding of the genre that I am using. The genre that I was using was R&B, so to understand and see what target audience I am looking at I carried out a questionnaire. This gave me a set of results that allowed me to see that my target audience was going to be the average teenager. To reach this target audience I had to stick to certain areas that reflect and relate to a teenagers life so that they feel a connection and link to the video. This includes relationships, being out going and problems. To make the video reflect these key points I had to use specific actors so that my video had the right feel and atmosphere. The actors I used were both 18 and the story line behind video was based on a relationship having trouble and being solved. As a result of this I feel that my target audience was successfully reached as I also used a modern day song which was No Air by Jordan sparks and Chris brown. This song is well known through out teenagers and is a very popular song which results in it linking to this target audience well.

For my sublimanery texts I have again used the conventions from other texts of the same genre to create my final pieces. I have found that the two texts really have to stand out from any other product and at the same time reflect each other. These two texts need to relate and reflect each other so that the audience can clearly tell that the two pieces are related to each other. As a result of this happening, the product will get spotted and recognized much easier and quicker. For example as you have been able to see the colour scheme and style that I have adopted are very similar. In the two texts I also used the same image of each artist so again then can be easily recognised as well as using the same image for the text that I made. To get the effect I wanted for my text I had to use a technique called light graffiti. Light graffiti is done by using a long exposure time on a still camera in a dark environment, using a light source to make different shapes and objects. By me using the same features, it results in more sales and publicity of my video as the design will become well known and easily recognised by the public audience.

In the making of the video I have used various different media technologies to create my video and present different aspects of it, to shoot the video itself I used my own camera that is a Nikon D5000 and uploaded this onto windows movie maker. With the camera being my own camera I am experienced and know the camera inside out and was able to put these skills into my video. One of these was the fact I could easily change the main focus point of the camera which gives a lot more depth into my video. The reason I had to use windows movie maker is because the format of my camera would not link to the format of the editing suit systems that were available at college. Once it was loaded onto movie maker I was then at the stage where I could edit and arrange my video into a presentable format. I used many different editing techniques to create the end product. These included slowing down a shot or speeding it up so the footage fitted in with the music. Also I used a black and white effect on many different occasions which was put in to show the difference from real life to reality. To present my work I have also used www.blogger.com which shows all the work that I have produced to work towards and the process of my video. An advantage to this is that it shows the journey I have come on and I am able to see my ideas develop over time. To make my magazine article and my digipack I have adopted the skills I gained from last year in making my magazine articles so as a result I have used DTP. So with the previous knowledge I have of this area I have made an effective set of subliminary texts.

In the process of making my video I have undergone many processes and problems. To start the process of my video going I had to make a storyboard so that I had a plan of what I planned to do and could work out what shots I was going to use. This in all is basically a visual script that allows me to present and produce my video much easier. Once I had done this I made a list of shots that I needed to take so that when it came to doing my shoots I had details of what needed to be done. This allowed me to have a small list compared to a storyboard to direct my video and at the same time to have a storyboard so that my actors were totally clear of what I expected. Now that I had done this I went and shot my video. Once my shots had all been taken I moved on to edit my video. To do this I used windows movie maker. One problem that did occur was that once I had edited all the shots taken it became clear I did not have enough footage. To make matters worse my actress Alex became very ill which resulted in me no longer being able to shoot. To resolve this I had to reuse past footage that had already been used and stretch other footage to fill in the gaps that I had left over. This also resulted in me having to change parts of the story line and the way I wanted it presenting but overall I feel that considering the circumstances the end result is of a high quality.