You have to evaluate and reflect on the creative process and your experience of it. You have to evaluate their work digitally. The format of the evaluation has some flexibility: you may answer some questions individually or with your production group as a whole. You should give a clear indication of your role in any group evaluation.
The four questions that must be addressed in the evaluation are:
- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
- What have you learned from your audience feedback?
- How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
EXEMPLAR BLOGS AND EVALUATIONS:
This evaluation got 19/20
Chromakey evaluation on audience
Another good A2 blog
A further good blog and evaluation
Excellent Dragons' Den response to Question 3
Tasks to complete your Evaluation:
- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Make a video for this one. You could film some of it 'on location' and you could interview some of your actors or the directors/camera operators about their role. You need to cover:- Explain the genre of your music video/short film. If you made a music video, use Andrew Goodwin's bullet points to help you explain the conventions of that genre and, for each one, explain how you either followed that convention or challenged it in some way, or both. Use examples and add clips from other music videos linked to your blog and from your own music video as evidence. If you made a short film, refer to narrative theory and other conventions and also add clips from other short films as evidence.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Do a Prezi. Start with the question displayed, then add links to your music video or short film, plus your two ancillary tasks. Go through the ways you created a 'brand identity' or 'appropriate aesthetical properties' running throughout the three pieces:
If you made a short film, the principle is the same, but refer to your film poster particularly.
- You may have kept the typography the same in your advert and on your website. Add screen shots of both. Say how through this you have created synergy so that audiences can clearly see that through the three different media forms there is an association with a single product. Explain that consistent use of one font enables record labels to establish an easily recognisable identity for their artists. Add shots of other artists' websites and, if you can, magazine adverts or website adverts or even merchandise ('merch') to show this.
- Another way to create synergy is through images of your artist. You may have kept your artist looking the same throughout, to create a 'pop' or 'indie' image. This creates a recognisable for your audience to identify with.You might have also created synergy by using stills from your music video in all three products, or doing a photo shoot with your artist in the same costume. Add pictures with captions to make it clear which picture is from which product.
- You might also have used symbolism or iconography throughout all three - shots of jewellery, a musical instrument for example, to create additional synergy between the products.
- The name of your album and the single from the music video may have featured prominently in all three products, again to create synergy and enable the audience to become familiar with the 'look' of the album and artist.
- Challenges: Explain the challenges you faced to create the brand identity - perhaps transferring the mood and atmosphere of your song from the music video to the website and advert which do not have the sound or moving images - using colour and page design to reflect the mood, instead.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Here you could use the video extracts from your initial audience questionnaires, your audience collage you made, clips of your rough cuts with commentary and examples of where you changed your work in response to feedback.
- Say you found it most productive to address the following in your audience research:
- What real audiences consume;
- Who are the specific audiences for your genre of music video or short film;
- How record labels/film companies target those audiences.
- Initially you researched online looking for data about the industry you are dealing with, such as sales figures for albums or audience figures for short films. You looked at how marketing of those albums and/or singles/films worked across a range of media, including radio, TV, websites, facebook, twitter, YouTube. You also talked to your peers about what they looked out for in a music video/short film.
- Later, you started pitching your ideas for your music video/film to the rest of the group and to your peers, taking feedback and noting the responses, then deciding how to proceed as a result.
- You then showed rough cuts of your music video/film and asked some carefully framed questions about them to get a sense of your audience's understanding of the product, not just whether they liked it: Do you think this works when we...? What do you think about the pace of our opening sequence? What do you understand from ...?
- Finally you took audience feedback during later stages and again on the finished product.
Audience Feedback Form
Ask your audience to fill this (or your own version) in when they've watched your work and use it to answer Question 3.
Audience Evaluation for Film Opening/Trailer:
Questions
|
Your answers
|
Write any comments you have here:
| |
1
|
On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being excellent and 1 being not at all, how effective was the music video/short film?
| ||
2
|
Who do you think this is aimed at? (for example, young girls, all young people, everyone...)
| ||
3
|
On a scale of 1-5, how effective do you think the soundtrack is?
| ||
4
|
On a scale of 1-5, how effective are the performers and setting?
| ||
5
|
On a scale of 1-5, how likely would you be to buy this song/album/ watch this film (when 1 means you wouldn’t watch it, and 5 means you definitely would)?
| ||
6
|
If you could change anything about the video/film, what would it be?
|
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Here, you could greenscreen your answer. You should include shots of all the different technologies you used. You could do this in a creative way, such as putting captions inside screens so it looks as if they are on the camera - anything that plays with technology and is creative!
RESEARCH & PLANNING
RESEARCH & PLANNING
- Websites and search engines - explain how useful they were to you in researching, planning and producing your music video/film. Comment on how these have developed over the last few years. Can you even imagine how you would have completed this work without them?!
- YouTube - show how you used YouTube to watch countless music videos/short films, analysing them frame by frame, replaying them over and again to watch the shots and editing, etc, and also to upload drafts for audience feedback.
- Facebook - you may have organised your shoots over facebook, enabling you to liaise with many different parties at the same time - how would you have managed without it?
- Twitter - how you used it, maybe even creating a Twitter feed for your artist.
- Whatsapp - to contact your performer, get feedback from your audience
- SoundCloud and SlideShare - used to research, import sounds into your blog, embed slide shows in your blog, etc.
- Blogger - its advantages over piles of paper, especially if you lose your storyboard (!), how you could amalgamate all your planning and research in one place, adding links, embedding videos...
- Prezi
- PowerPoint
- Slideshare to upload PowerPoint and research
CONSTRUCTION
- Digital cameras
- iMovie - include screenshots of your edit to show off your skills, e.g. your soundscape or filters used, greenscreening
- USBs etc to transfer data
- Final Cut Pro X and its effects for editing details
- Motion 5
- Photoshop
- LiveType
- Pages and FontBook on a Mac
- Apps such as VideoScribe, Explain Everything, Afterlight, Instagram
- Online software such as Pic Monkey, Gimp, LunaPic, DaFont, Tumblr, Wix to build your website
EVALUATION
- ANYTHING you haven't mentioned yet!
- Any challenges and how you overcame them...
- Finally, technological convergence - how all of this is available on one Apple Mac computer...
