Evaluation -

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

After extensive research in to the codes and conventions that professionals use to create media texts, my understanding flourished and I attempted to use this knowledge to create professional looking products. Firstly, with the magazine advert I challenged media clichés in the sense that the main image is of a semi-nude male with clothes draped round his neck implying that he is the one who will be stripping. This defies the traditional sense of the song it is advertising because it is a male singing to a female, “baby, take off your dress”. This role reversal challenges the taken meaning of the song and adds a comedic effect. The photo could also be seen to be voyeuristic which challenges Andrew Goodwin’s theory that voyeurism is predominantly witnessed with female characters.

Secondly is the DVD cover, which I am very proud of in the way it mimics similar media items. The use of the provocative male model again challenges female scopophilia but also challenges Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze” theory in which she states that, “women are objectified and seen only for their beauty.” Our product contradicts this by objectifying a male character instead. The male is also comically wearing a pair of ladies neon pink knickers in an attempt to challenge the social norm and to blur the line between male and female. In doing so the audience sees the product as an emblem of sexual liberty rather than prejudicing against a particular gender. It may be sexually arousing for women but it may also be viewed by men because its challenge of social apartheid is humourous.

In terms of material content, the DVD cover features many conventional emblems that are seen on professional DVD’s. Most notable are the billing block, which was produced using a professional standard font (Universal 39 Condensed) to add authenticity to the piece. There are logos, trademarks and technical information on the lower half of the DVD in small print so as to mimic the technical jargon that legally has to be printed on DVD’s in circulation around the world. On top of this there is an age rating logo informing any possible consumer of the age restriction - which is again a legal necessity in the industry. Moreover, there is a brief review from a newspaper on the front cover used as a marketing ploy.

Our final item is the music video of our chosen song. Ours conforms to Sven E. Carlsson’s theory of music videos in that it is a “conceptual clip” because it doesn’t merely contain footage of the songs performance it also attempts a multi-strand narrative entwined with this. Andrew Goodwin states a list of aspects that he believes are featured in the majority of conventional music videos. Firstly he realizes there is a link between lyrics and visual aspects. Ours conforms to this because the narrative implies the lyrics meanings and illustrates, possibly amplifies their meaning. Ours also conforms to the second of his checkpoints that says there is a link between music and visuals. This is seen throughout our piece and in fact it was our videos syncing and footage being matched to the beat that our positive audience feedback picked up on quite a number of times. Again, our video conforms to his third point, which is that there are several close-ups of the main vocalist.

In terms of filming techniques our music video challenged clichés in the way it was both filmed and edited. We used a number of comical editing techniques in an attempt to maximize the videos comedy value. Most notable is the brief fade out of the song while a slow Ken Burns effect zooms on to a spontaneous and naturally funny expression on one of the characters faces. Set to the backdrop of the clichéd sound of tumbleweed the brief scene garnered a lot of laughs. We also used this juxtaposition technique at the start of the video, which begins with “Hark the Herald Angel Sings” and abruptly flows into “You Can Leave Your Hat On”. The opposing musical difference between the songs has a comical effect on its audience. This type of humour is seen in many sitcoms and TV shows especially.

The effect used on the narrative scenes of our video is the raster effect and this creates a sense of surveillance for the audience watching it (as used in such films as “My Little Eye”), it allows them to feel as if they are witnessing something that they shouldn’t be or that the stripper does not know they are seeing. This is gaining audience pleasure from voyeurism and in accordance to Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model (1973), the audience definitely views this video from a negotiated reading because although the video does not attempt to stamp any persuasive influence on the audience, there is definitely a part of the video left to the imagination. Moreover, the final scene in which the stripper is in two places at once should leave the audience questioning as to whether the stripping really happened or was it just a scene of fantasy.

Finally, re-running the song over the end credits makes for a pleasurable viewing experience because the audience is allowed to continue enjoying the comedy and also sees the human side to the characters as the footage shown is deleted scenes/bloopers. In relation to Blumner and Katz’s ‘Uses and Gratifications’ theory (1974), the audience consumes this video for a means of diversion or escapism, but allowing them an insight into the actors reality this way allows them to become more connected with the characters, especially due to the final scene which is a snippet from the filming log and because of this I would say that it could possibly be said that its audience views the video for a personal relationships purpose.

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

I believe our three texts work well in correlation with each other. Aesthetically it is evident that they are promoting the same thing through a number of ways. There are only characters used and at least one of us features on each of the texts. The use of colour is important, I believe the mise-en-scene used in the music video correlates with the DVD cover especially because the lighting was romantically lit and it is fluent and aesthetically pleasing on the DVD cover. The connection brinked between the magazine advert and the DVD cover is the use of the Joe Cocker logo that we created that consists of a brown and yellow diagonal bar with red writing that we used on both texts.

One of the key themes I researched was ‘intertextuality’ and the use of the pink neon knickers in the video helps shape the meaning of the DVD cover. To an oblivious viewer who saw the DVD cover but not the video it would be comical but not nearly as much as if he he/she knew the importance of the pants in the music video. It was the main climax of the music videos narrative and probably the most memorable part. Being included on the DVD cover aswell I think it is easy for the audience to grasp the connection.

Stephen Archer theorises that in music videos “There needs to be a strong and coherent relationship between narrative and performance in music promos. It needs to market both the song and the band”. I believe we realize this theory in our music video but also across our ancillary texts. The music video has an even balance of performance and narrative and when the stripper appears as a backing dancer for the performers towards the end of the video, the bridge is crossed between the two and they are linked together nicely for the conclusion of the song. The DVD cover promotes the song with the theme of nudity but also promotes the band by giving them a personality. When the viewer opens the DVD case they are faced with a before and after shot of the band members naked. Giving them a personality will allow the viewer to connect with the band members as people because everybody can relate to nakedness and this will help promote the band.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Gaining feedback has been an integral part of our journey. Firstly we showcased the film to our classmates who were asked to give us anonymous but critical feedback. This was very useful to see how a previously unbeknown audience reacted to our video. A recurring

theme that came up was the confusion about the shots of the bath. We made this shot a while back when we had thought about making a “narrative clip” (Sven E. Carlsson’s music video theory). We were experimenting with time lapse photography and thought that having a bath-full of water come out of a small glass would be an effective shot. After changing our idea we thought the shot was scrapped but then during editing I decided to add it in to add a little bit of uncertainty into the piece. The feedback we got was basically that people did not understand why the shot was there. This led many people to even shun the bath shot quoting it “would have been better without the bath”. This showed to me that the video was being seen from a hegemonic reading (Stuart Hall 1973) because some audience members were making their own decisions to not appreciate the bath scene because they didn’t understand why it was there.

Amongst the class feedback was also many comments saying that they would of loved to have seen more stripping. This may not be taken seriously but the fact that it was mentioned so much challenges Laura Mulvey’s theory of objectification. It would appear that where female objectification can be misinterpreted or purposely derogatory, male objectification does not cause controversy. Our biggest praise was for the editing because of how in sync it was with the music and the lyrics. This accredits our conformation to Andrew Goodwins theory that music videos visuals should maintain a good relation to the music. The video was edited on iMovie on an Apple MacBook Pro. iMovie is an amateur consumer program but with a small bit of practise, anybody can edit together professional looking shots, transitions and effects. Using iMovie allowed us to transform somewhat moderately average mid shots and close ups and turn them into an enjoyable experience.

After the class feedback we posted our video on social networking sites YouTube and Facebook. Positive feedback has been received off both. We have had ratings on YouTube and are maintaining a 4.5/5 star average. This has been fun and interesting to find because it gives us an insight in to what an audience thought of the video that has relation to us. Our classmates obviously know us and relate to us as they are doing the same coursework as we are but for people we don’t know to be giving the video good feedback we are very pleased.

One thing we definitely missed out on was gaining feedback for our ancillary texts. I think this could have been very useful because it would have been easily to make minor changes here and there depending on our feedback, with our video it was slightly more of a challenge but if I was to do it again I would definitely put aside more time for feedback, moderations and continguency.

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

Without technology creating what I have created for media would have been impossible. Technology is involved in all stages of my work. To be able to view my coursework and to have a secure place to store it where I could easily access it from multiple workplaces and it still being able to be seen by my tutor whenever is necessary is something that could not be done without the use of the internet. More specifically I have used a website called www.blogspot.com which has allowed me to post continual blogs as I progress through my coursework. Without this easy access trying to share coursework and produce together in a group of three would have been traumatic. Blogspot is accessible to anyone and when a post is published the whole world can see it. This is how the internet has impacted modern society. We now live in a ‘global village’ according to Marshall Mcluhan, in a world that has “electronic interdependence”. He theorized in the early 1960’s that this would happen, he reckoned it would draw communities closer together and we as a race will become more of a collective identity.

This to some extent proves true as the internet provides a platform for anybody, anywhere in the world to communicate. Without such sites as photobucket.com, 4shared.com and other file hosting servers, demonstrating my work would have been difficult. Without social networking sites such as YouTube and Facebook we would not have been able to gain the anonymous feedback like we have. Social networking is a phenomenon that David Gauntlett has recently theorised as the cause for audiences to become eager to create their their own media rather than be exposed to mass media and unquestionably absorb its messages. Gauntlett’s ‘making is happening’ theory supposes that the curious audience of today would rather learn and make their own assumptions by themselves by creating media than to entertain it and naively swallow its portrayals without questioning.

Besides the internet, computers themselves have played a huge part in our work. From iMovie and Final Cut (with which creating such a successful film would have been impossible), right down to Fireworks and even Microsoft Word, attempting such a product without them would have been unfeasible. iMovie allowed me to create a professional looking movie with very little practise of usin the program – it was built with the intention of beginner use. Having access to Apple Mac computers was a huge bonus aswell because they are less liable to crash and work loss is a lot less frequent because of how well they are made but also because of iMovie’s built in settings that’s auto-saves work after every new action.

During our music video production we obviously had to use a handheld camera and equipment. This did prove tricky at times because battery loss is common or lack of memory on card but we did our best to work around it. We played about and experimented with the camera before we did any final filming so we had knowledge of the camera settings. I particularly like to change the white balance settings to a fluorescent balance because I thought the look appropriate for our filming.