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

Our music video uses and develops typical forms and conventions of a music video but challenges some conventions along the way. As Kate Nash is a single, female, indie singer, it was important to portray her character through our video. Traditionally, Kate Nash dresses quite childish and bright coloured. After researching the genre she is in and her other videos, we decided we wanted to show a simpler and mature side to Kate Nash’s song.  From creating a mood board of outfits it was easier for us to decide how we wanted to show Kate Nash. We wanted to demonstrate Kate Nash’s personality through the characters clothes, we still wanted to show Nash’s feminine but edgy side. We made sure that the simple dress code was shown throughout the video; this meant that the character did not wear much make-up and wore simply clothes.  

We looked closely at Kate Nash’s previous video to her first single ‘Foundations’. This video has inspired us from the beginning. We looked at the detail of Nash’s outfit, make up and props. 

Our video links closely to the one above. In both videos, the artist is singing at the audience, as if it’s a type of diary or snippet into their life. By referencing to Nash in our video we have established our video by replicating a professional music video and artist.  

We have included lot of close-up shots of the character; this is a typical demand for a music video.

As this was a debut video we wanted the video to be remembered by the audience and stand out.

We applied Goodwin’s theory to our video. We developed upon the relationship between the lyrics and visual stimulus. From having the ‘ever ever ever’ at the end we have followed this theory. We also changed the editing due to the music becoming more upbeat. At the end of our video, the editing became rapidly faster compared to the fast due to the song.

Our editing was like most, non-naturalistic. We challenged Bordwell's classic Hollywood cinema theory by cutting quickly to different scenes which the viewer could tell had changed.   

Our narrative includes a girl not happy with her life, she then changes it with the dislike of her Mother then decides she is happy with the changes at the end.

Our album cover is very strong. We did a lot of research and liked Adele’s – 21 album cover as it was very simply but extremely effective.

The digipak links with the album cover and music video closely. We put pictures of the character in the video in the digipak as imagery is a major part of a band’s appearance as this gets the audience interested. This is because the audience may recognise the video because of the digipak or the other way round, they then promote each other through this. We included specific images including a barcode, record label logo and track names on the last panel to demonstrate that it is real. We included different outfits on each panel to show the audience a wider view of the artists personality through her clothes. 

 I have gone through my final product and found 8 distinct frames which I have made into a mood board. 

5 of the images used above are locations within the house and another is at a school. We have used these as they fit in with the lyrics being said at the time, they either say the location/action of the actress or imply it. Our locations have definitely fit in with the genre of our music video and even developed a few. This is because all of the locations are very obvious to the video as the artist has either implied it or said it in the lyric. 

In our music video, we have included just credits. They are in the same font and style as the magazine advert. This is so all of the products are linked so whenever the audience see's that style of writing they will then think of our product. The credits had a black background so the audience could focus on just the writing on the screen and find out the information being given to them which was the name of the song, artist, the record label the artist is on and the producer and director or the music video. The style of writing we have used has in a way, challenged the genre of our music video. This is because of the sophistication of the font we have used. We used this because of the underlining meaning we personally thought the song had. The pink letters fit in with the genre of the music video as it shows an immature side of the video.

Throughout the music video we have 3 main locations. These are the house, school and park.

We have used many locations inside the house which include, the kitchen, bedroom, conservatory, hall, garden and a white wall. 

This is similar with the school location as we used the inside of an office, corridor and the field.

 The park has many locations which are beside the pond, rose walk, tree, benches, paths and more. 

We used many props throughout the video. These include, geek glasses, bubbles a pen, newspaper, a book, teddies, paper, a photo album, magnetic letters, glitter, glue, clothes, a pearly bracelet and necklaces. These are all shown in the mood board below.

 These were all essentials to the music video as they were either said in the lyrics or added to the character of Mariella during the video. Again, all of the props we used went along with the genre of the music video conventions. This is because of how obvious all of the props were that we used. Without them, it would have been clear to the audience that we have not used them. 

During the music video we used 4 different outfits. They were, a colourful dress, a black and white smart dress, a pink top with a flowery skirt and a black dress.

 This kept the audiences attention with the video. Again, we had to use certain costumes as it described some of the outfits in the lyrics in the song, so without them the video would not have been as successful as we would have liked. Because of this factor it is definite that the costumes fit in with the conventions of a Kate Nash music video. 

We used many different camera angles and edited our music video just so it would fit in with the codes and conventions of a Kate Nash music video. If we did not do this then our music video would not have been as strong as it is. Throughout the music video we used, high and low angle shots, tracking shots, close ups and long shots and many more. This gave the video a wide variety of shots and kept the audience entertained. 

The music video starts off with the character playing Mariella, her face. This starts off the tone of the video which is quite quick paced and fast editing. Straight away it is clear that it is a happy genre and a typical 'Kate Nash' style of music video, following on from her previous video 'Foundations'. This clearly fits in with the conventions of a music video by Kate Nash.

Audience feedback

audience feedback questions for evaluation

1. After watching our music video do you feel it fits into the pop genre and if not why?
2. do you feel that our narrative suited the genre of our music video?
3. do you think the actions on screen related to the lyrics?
4. Do you feel we used appropriate costumes in relation to our song?
5. Do you feel we could improve our music video?
6. Overall, how would you rate our music video out of 10 and reasons why?

Audience feedback

After we had finished our music video we wanted audience feedback to see how we could improve if we had to do our project again.  Therefore, we decided to show two small groups of people within our target audience our video and gauge their reactions.  Our target audience is predominately females, within the age group of 17-25.   By doing this, we can use any constructive criticism to help us make any improvements and help us evaluate our video overall in blog posts we need to complete in the future.  By making these necessarily improvements, we can then target a wider audience.


Our questions were:
- After watching our music video, do you feel it fits into the pop genre and if not why?
- Do you feel that our narrative suited the genre of our music video?
- Do you think the actions on screen related to the lyrics?
- Do you feel we used appropriate costumes in relation to our song?
- Do you feel we could improve our music video? 
- Overall, how would you rate our music video out of 10 and reasons why?

Therefore, in order to get audience feedback we used a selection of students who were available at the time of filming audience feedback.  This was good, as we had some media students and some who weren't all within the same age group, however due to this we were unable to collect a representative sample of our target market as they may all have different opinions.  The questions we asked were relevant to our music video, and we attempting to engage the audience by a group environment as this encouraged everyone to speak more and be more open. 

  They all understood the aims of our video, and overall they enjoyed it with their only criticism being that we could improve the ending.  After hearing this, we quickly re-shot people holding up the words 'ever' on a sheet of paper in order to break up the ending and make it more interesting.  Therefore, after this they liked the video more, and found it cheerful to watch, they also liked how we cut scenes so we didn't use a long take even though this was difficult to do with some areas of the song.  The only other criticism was that there could have been more exciting and well known locations however they understood that due to the lyrics this was difficult to achieve.  Our audience feedback group also though that we could have benefited from more characters, which we would take into consideration next time we needed to film.  If we had to do our video again, we would take on board the constructive criticism that our audience feedback provided, and make the adjustments necessarily in order to improve our music video.

Twitter page

This is our Kate Nash twitter page, here we created a page in order to directly appeal to our target market.  We have 48 followers, and this use of social networking allows our music to be spread across a wider demographic of people, and allows our video to go viral.

Facebook page

This is the Facebook page we have created for our Kate Nash music video in order for our music to become popular on social networking websites such as Facebook.  This will also appeal to our target market, as they are the the people who most commonly use social networking websites.  This will make our music video more well known and popular, allowing audience feedback to increase as more people watch our video and write additional comments on our Facebook page.