Evaluation questions

1.

• Our media project uses many of the media conventions used by real media products.
• The conventions it uses are common in real music videos of the pop genre.
• Although the conventions in pop music videos are broad they all follow the Goodwin points

1. Intertextuality: Our music video is partly filmed in black and white and this may give references to old films like Casablanca. It is also set in Cambridge and shows some of the famous landmarks there such as in the film Chariots of Fire. Another example of intertextuality is the way the rapper is shown; he's shown the same way he is portrayed in his own music videos in which he wears modern clothes and the editing is experimental with all the split screens and jump cuts.
2. Link between music and visuals: Our music video has strong links between music and visuals as every shot in it is cut to the beat which is done in a lot of pop videos such as Adele's - Rolling in the Deep. Also the stronger notes in the music are complemented in the video with brighter scenes in colour.
3. Lyrics and visuals: Our music video follows these in many ways. Kanye West refers to some lyrics with hand gestures while Adele looks sad when she's singing sad lyrics. There aren't many direct links between our music video and the lyrics. But there still are some subtle links between them; some of these include the setting and effects used in the video. All of these being quite mellow and sad locations and effects (black and white) which suit the lyrics very well. However links between lyrics and the music video aren't that important as it's not something you see in pop music videos very often. It's not one of the main genre conventions  in pop music videos.
4. Genre conventions: Our music video follows some of the pop genre conventions. These bein included in:

• The costumes the artists are wearing which are fashionable popular clothes that are very fitting with pop music videos.
• The editing of the video as it is very heavy on it including lots of shots and angles of the artist.

     5. Demands of the record label: Many pop videos have visible features that are demanded by the           

         record label wether it for advertising a certain brand or giving an image to the artist. Or music video 

         doesn't advertise any particular brands but it does give a certain image of the artists. For example: 

         Adele is shown as an emotional relaxed girl with a powerful voice whereas Kanye is shown as a

         fun upbeat character.

     6. One of the features of pop music videos is voyeurism: This is when music videos show

         controversial things that perhaps the viewer shouldn't see. Or recorded from the point of view of 

         someone or through a camera. Our music video doesn't really show any of these characteristics as

         it is a sad song and controversial content is not something you tend to see in any of the artist's past

        music videos.

Our music video has used many of the conventions of a generic pop video and has not developed or challenges any conventions as we wanted to make it as much like music video as possible.

2.
     Our combination of all our products work very well toguether as a promotional package as they all suit eachother and promote the artist very well.

All the products create the same image of the main artist - Adele. In the music video she is filmed in black and white in a graveyard where she is portrayed as a hurt, sad and emotional person because of her expression and the feelings sung in the lyrics of the song. The digi pack and the advert aren't to different as they both show Adele's face in the same melancoly mood looking away from the camera, in a dark room with a light in the background.The adverts and digipack also included good reviews, bonus features (live performance, interview) and the artists name in bold simple letters to make Adele seem like an artist everyone knows, who doesn't need fancy letters to stand out, who is well respected in the reviews and isn't afraid to share with her fans via interviews. For these reasons the advert, digi pack and video work very well together as a promotional package. And will make the artist successful at attracting the target audience.

3.

     What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The audience feedback we received throughout the writing, filming and editing of our music video proved to be essential as the music video wouldn't be the same with out it.

We received our first audience feedback after our initial pitch. Although we didn't get a lot of feedback initially it proved to be very useful for the filming of our video. Most of the audience liked our pitch and idea saying that it followed the conventions of a typical pop music video. We also received some constructive criticism regarding who was going to play Adele for which we had no answer for at the time but made us conscious that it was a decision that needed to be made soon enough. Another important part of our feedback was about what lighting we were going to use for the filming of half our music video. This led to us having to buy a powerful torch which we later didn't use because of some delays in our filming.

After filming our music video and making a rough-cut of it we were given another feedback from our peers and teachers. We received a balance of positive and negative feedback. Some of the most common and most important reviews we got included:

• The lip syncing needing some improvements. (We solved this later by tweaking the timing of the clips and matching particular words with particular movements to make the lip syncing look more in sync.
• We were told that the first 60 seconds of our music video dragged on quite a bit. (to stop this from happening we then added some other footage of different locations, put some effects into it such as fading, split screens and ghosting, making the video more interesting to the viewer without losing the style of the music video.
• There were also some small things people pointed out such as the dogs in the background of one of the shots (which we solved by cropping the size of the frame to exclude the dogs from the image)
• We were told that the acting by Adele wasn't very good compared to the performance by Kanye and that the costumes weren't very good. (There wasn't much we could do about this because these were present throughout most of the music video) 

We also received some good feedback such as: Kanye West's performance being outstanding, Good variety of locations and shots, good lighting and effective cuts and transitions.