Evaluation!!!

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

When we started doing this media product we decided that we wanted to challenge media certain media conventions of rap music. We decided that we wanted to challenge normal conventions in rap music videos by making a female character that would rap with backing vocals performed by the male characters. We used Danielle to challenge this and Manny and Me would be the backing characters. We originally used a song that knew Danielle could rap to and also we could do the chorus to. We also choose to make Danielle a nerd in order to make it seem even more challenging because normally nerds are not in to rap music.

With the posters and the website I decided to use bright colours to help make our “nerd” look more girl and also by using bright colours we was trying to be more individual because usually rap artists use dark colours. When I was researching digi-paks and websites most rap artists used very similar designs but when you change genre you start noticing the differences because now people start being more different with their designs.

When we changed the song for the music video because we need a song that would work with the footage we had in mind we lost a bit of the original ideas of the conventions. By changing the music video to include some dancing we accidentally followed a normal convention that is used by most music artists like Chris Brown and T-pain that is to include dancing in the video. So although we might have lost the challenging of male characters I think we still managed to follow some set conventions of having dance. I think we still managed to get the bright and vividness that was started on the website and the digi-pak.

I think our media products do not challenge conventions because the products I created because when we changed the song we then lost the challenging ability but I think the use bright colours and constancy in colour use and the usage of masks makes it a bit less conventional. I have only come across one rap artist who uses such bright colours and I think we managed to be part of the revolution.

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

The main task and the ancillary tasks work very well together because all of them manage to have certain things that link them together and allow them to be work together. I think because the Website was created with bright summery colours and then the digi-pak followed on the same route allowing it to look very summery as well allowed them two to look linked as though as if they where made to work side by side.

The music video originally did not have the anything linking it to the other two ancillary tasks and this posed a great challenge because it would not make it possible for it to be able to be marketed as part of the two ancillary tasks.

When I found an opportunity to record more footage I organised the female dancers to have bright coloured tops that are different and also they wore different colours converses which meant that they stood out from each other and by doing this I created a connection between the ancillary tasks and the main tasks by using colours. When you look at the digi-pak, website and the music video you can notice correlations between the work and not just the fact that Danielle is in them all. I think that they all work well together as a combination because you can clearly see how they are linked.

What have you learned from audience feedback?

From the audience feedback I learned that one of the clip did not have the sound muted so they was my voice in the background speaking. Also they is a continuity error because on of the dancers took their masks off and you can actually see her face and this is not good. When people watch the video they actually say that the dancer has her mask off and this is the only major error that could not be rectified.

Also from the audience feedback I originally found out that flipping the picture of Danielle would make it more inviting and better. Although in the fine version the picture of Danielle is not flipped the people I asked to looked at the digi-pak they said it was good and I also learned that the colours and the design looked good and very effective.

I also think that the website we created did not work well because it made a mix of business and artist. From some feedback we got it came up that it would have been better if the artists site had less of the production company and had more about her maybe make the production companies page less more blatant making it for people who are actually researching into the company.

The music video also had errors within it that made it less professional as I wanted it to come out as. To find out the main errors click here

Originally we only made a front cover to the song and it was later on I realised that we needed to create a digi-pak and we had pages to the digi-pak missing. I then had to create all the other pages in order to convert the CD cover into a digi-pak for more read here

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

To construct the whole project I used different number of software and technology. The different types of software used were Adobe Photoshop, Fireworks, iWeb and iMovie. The different software changed due to the different types of work that was being published. The media technologies that are used to construction the ranges of media products I used in all the stages of the production process allowed me to get a professional finish on the different productions for example the digi-pak (see digi-pak for more: http://ngoniie.blogspot.com/2010/04/digipak.html). To get the effect I wanted many occasions I had to think of different ways to get the effect I wanted across.

What would I change?

If I was to do the work again I would change many parts of the video, digi-pak and website. I am happy with the current level of the work but I feel if I had a chance to do it again I would learn from my mistakes.

The main problems I feel that we spent a lot of our time doing nothing and when we realised that we wanted to change the group work and when we actually did change it, it meant that the work we had done was then irrelevant to our current brief. The work on my blog from dates before January 2010 was then useless and also it meant we had less time to do the whole project. Also the work we did might have been better if we did not wait till near the deadlines to actually start filming and editing the various products.

I also feel that we had poor communication because not everyone contributed to the work and it mainly ended up being me doing all the work not because I felt I could do it on my own but because I felt that if I did not do the work the deadline would pass with no work. Even though I did all the work I did give my group the chance to contribute and I would also tell them the things that were going on and I left it to them to be there to contribute to the group work.
I think that if I could do it again I would try and make sure that everyone contributed to the work and make sure that as a group we worked to certain deadlines that we set ourselves.