Final Video

Ancillary Comparisons

Our group came across the idea through research about keeping the look of the individual products created the same. This meant that the house style, fonts and overall themes would be kept the same throughout.

We found this to be important through research and audience feedback and were told that an audience is likely to reject a product if it doesn't conform to particular codes and conventions and doesn't have the same theme running through it.

I have collected 3 pages from 3 different magazines (print media) to show my understanding of contrasting house styles that an audience would reject. The images below would be rejected by a target audience if sold together due to its contrast in house style and genre.

this gave us something to aspire to and made sure we came together to personally review all the products made as well as altering them to ensure the themes were the same throughout.

Going along this route would alter the audiences reaction as to what they would do with the product (Reception Theory).

This research also takes on elements of Gaze Theory as we want our audience to be happy with the product presented them and to accept it because it complies to certain codes and conventions and relates to them.

Creative Arts Evening

During term time our school hosted a Creative Arts Evening in which our videos were going to be shown to 100 people as well as our individual ancillary tasks. The video below shows what happened at the event and also include feedback we got from those who attended the evening.

Evaluation Question 4

How did you use new technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages

Blog

Throughout the blogging process I have come to find that there is a number of ways in which work can be presented which is pleasing to the eye, meaning not heavily text based. As far as developments in technology go, there is a big increase in the way information can be shared, whether it’s through the internet, television or radio.

For this blogging process in particular, I was going to have to apply my ICT knowledge as well as creative skills learned throughout the Media course in order to present an exciting blog which incorporates different technologies. Throughout this blog there is use of different presentation features such as Prezi, which is an interactive slideshow used to show a different side to work that could have been presented as text, Worlde, which is a feature that combines words of phrases given by our target audience and designed to emphasis the words used the most, as these are shown to be the biggest. I found that these gave a deeper insight into what needed to be told and was a clever way of displaying information and examples of these presentation features are shown below:

Another feature I used was You Tube and not by choice. In order to upload a video to the blog, it has to be done through Youtube or else the video will not play. This is done using Google, as they own Blogger and Youtube, showing an interlinking of the use of the internet dominated by this company. This relates to research carried out for the exam as we are looking at hegemony in media companies and overall ownership between News Corporation and Disney.

Video

For the music video a range of technologies was used in order to capture record and edit our video. To record and capture footage, the group and I used a video camera aided by a tripod which was useful to the development of our music video as we were able to achieve a range of shots which wouldn’t have been achievable without it.

To then edit the video we used a Video Editing Machine to enhance and develop it according to the audience feedback we received. This software and equipment was very useful to us and we were all able to develop our skills through this form of media.

Ancillary

As part of the creation of the ancillary tasks I used a computer and software such as Adobe Dreamweaver and Illustrator (Adobe CS3 package). This technology and software enabled me to create a professional poster which conformed to the codes and conventions of existing media products as well as a carefully designed, interactive website with a click-to-enter page and a home page.

Overall I found the of new technologies daunting to being with but as time went on I felt more and more comfortable with it and I think this shows in the groups final video and my ancillary tasks

Evaluation Question 3

 What have you learned from your audience feedback?Throughout this task the group and I have relied heavily on audience feedback in order to create the best possible product. upon choosing the song "Thinking of Me" by Olly Murs (through audience feedback) our first mode of action was to narrow down those who liked that genre of music, being pop and reggae and then average the ages of those people so we had a concentrated market to work with.


This choice helped us move on to create a story board and annotate the lyrics of the song in which we felt it was best to continually include our target audience as we were creating a product for them. From this I learned that looking for audience feedback during the early stages of planning and production is what could make or break your final product and without it we as a group would have struggled to create the main and individual products we did.

in order to concentrate the feedback we got, we used a presentation technique called Wordle in which we entered the words most commonly used by our target audience in order to look at the areas we were struggling in. what we soon found was that getting audience feedback isn’t designed so that we can carry on developing the things that are good but is there help us develop those things that our audience would reject upon seeing, with references being made to Reception Theory. Below is the presentation feature mentioned above, with the words being used by our target audience to describe different aspects of our product?

Another key moment of audience feedback came towards the end of the development of the music video. This was a creative arts evening held by our school to showcase the work of the creative department. It was a good night of entertainment and our group made sure we took the opportunity of getting feedback from the audience that viewed our video which can be viewed below.

In conclusion, audience feedback is a very useful tool which can make or break your product. It can help you differentiate your ideals to that of your target audience. Personally audience feedback was a great help to our work and meant that we knew that the product we were creating is what our audience wanted, meaning their Reception of it was guaranteed.

Evaluation Question 2

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

In order to create Ancillary Tasks that relate to our target audience I carried out research and had to collect information which was vital to the development of these products.

From this I was able to develop my products and get constructive criticism from my target audience, peers and teachers. I also made sure that through research I stuck to the codes and conventions of the individual tasks and of the mass market.

As I was creating a poster I made sure I used knowledge from the previous year to help me design a product that could be on a billboard. I also had to do research into this type of poster as I had never created a poster for an artist meaning I was learning as well as contributing. From this I designed a product that got good feedback and matched all other Ancillary Tasks designed by other members of the group.

The second Ancillary Task I was to create was a website. Chosen by the group to head this task I had to apply my ICT knowledge more than anything, but make sure I did research into websites of other artists such as Rihanna and Flo Rida. In the end I was able to create a product that related to the themes we had chosen as a group and matched in various ways to the other Ancillary Tasks.

As far as the music video is concerned, after choosing and pitching our ideas we decided that going along the vintage was the right thing to do as the featured artist incorporated those things in that particular songs with elements of Reggae and Pop also featured. All of the products created incorporated aspects of Reception as well as Uses and Gratification Theory with that key word feedback coming in. Without it, many of the decisions made would have been of the group’s individual preferences and not those of our target audience.

Overall feedback told me that the combination of my main and ancillary texts worked well and related greatly to our target audience and this is backed by the storyboards we created and information we collected from our audience. The themes are all the same and although these products are all individual, there was a good use of repetition of some aspects such as font and layout. Below are examples of the ancillary tasks created as well as some of the feedback received from our target audience and peers.

Evaluation Question 1

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