Evaluation of your Music Videos

KEY DATES FOR YOUR DIARIES -->
DEADLINE FOR EVALUATION: WEDNESDAY 4TH MAY
DEADLINE FOR BLOGS CLOSED: FRIDAY 6TH MAY


TASK: You need to evaluate and reflect on the creative process and their experience of it. The questions that must be addressed in the evaluation are:

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products
2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?
4) How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

WHICH MEDIUM WILL YOU CHOOSE TO EVALUATE YOUR PRODUCTION? Choose a combination of the following:

- PowerPoint presentation
- Short film, uploaded to YouTube
- Essay style, blogging
- Images and annotations on blog

The choice is yours but the more creative the better!

Examples we looked at in lesson are:

From OCR: http://musicvideoalexanderwhitcombe.blogspot.com/
From YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_udTjIydLE
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=a2+media+evaluation+questions&aq=f
http://a2mediaparkesm.blogspot.com/2011/03/in-what-ways-does-your-media-product.html


The marking grid is below:

Moderation Marking Criteria for your Evaluation

Level 4 16–20 marks

There is excellent understanding of the forms and conventions used in the productions
There is excellent understanding of the role and use of new media in various stages of the production.
There is excellent understanding of the combination of main product and ancillary texts.
There is excellent understanding of the significance of audience feedback.
There is excellent skill in choice of form in which to present the evaluation.
There is excellent ability to communicate.
There is excellent use of digital technology or ICT in the evaluation.


Eight key concepts of media literacy you can refer to in your evaluations

1. All media is constructed The media do not present simple reflections of external reality. Rather, they present carefully crafted constructions that reflect many decisions and result from many determining factors. Media Literacy works towards deconstructing these constructions, taking them apart to show how they are made.
2. The media construct reality The media are responsible for the majority of the observations and experiences from which we build up our personal understandings of the world and how it works. Much of our view of reality is based on media messages that have been pre-constructed and have attitudes, interpretations and conclusions already built in. The media, to a great extent, give us our sense of reality.
3. Audiences negotiate meaning in the media The media provide us with much of the material upon which we build our picture of reality, and we all "negotiate" meaning according to individual factors: personal needs and anxieties, the pleasures or troubles of the day, racial and sexual attitudes, family and cultural background, and so forth.
4. Media have commercial implications Media Literacy aims to encourage an awareness of how the media are influenced by commercial considerations, and how these affect content, technique and distribution. Most media production is a business, and must therefore make a profit. Questions of ownership and control are central: a relatively small number of individuals control what we watch, read and hear in the media.
5. Media contain ideological and value messages All media products are advertising, in some sense, in that they proclaim values and ways of life. Explicitly or implicitly, the mainstream media convey ideological messages about such issues as the nature of the good life, the virtue of consumerism, the role of women, the acceptance of authority, and unquestioning patriotism.
6. Media have social and political implications The media have great influence on politics and on forming social change. Television can greatly influence the election of a national leader on the basis of image. The media involve us in concerns such as civil rights issues, famines in Africa, and the AIDS epidemic. They give us an intimate sense of national issues and global concerns, so that we become citizens of Marshall McLuhan's "Global Village."
7. Form and content are closely related in the media As Marshall McLuhan noted, each medium has its own grammar and codifies reality in its own particular way. Different media will report the same event, but create different impressions and messages.
8. Each medium has a unique aesthetic form Just as we notice the pleasing rhythms of certain pieces of poetry or prose, so we ought to be able to enjoy the pleasing forms and effects of the different media.

KEY DATES

KEY DATES FOR YOUR DIARY


FINAL DESIGN FOR YOUR MAGAZINE ADVERT UPLOADED AND ANALYSED BY Wednesday 16th March

ALL EDITING FINISHED BY Wednesday 6th April

BLOGS CLOSED BY Friday 6th May


Homework due in for next week: Wednesday 9th March.

Bring in your essay on a memory stick so we can improve it in the lesson

"Describe and evaluate your creativity skills development from AS to A2"

Ancilliary Task Two: Magazine Advert

HOMEWORK TO COMPLETE FOR FRIDAY'S LESSON

TASKS ONE: Blog the conventions of a music advertisement

Artist name and album title
Release date
Web address / myspace
Product content – extra DVD footage, bonus tracks
Magazine reviews/endorsements – NME, Q, Atmosphere, Smash Hits, Kerrang, The Guardian Music Monthly Review STARS
Name of record label
Tour dates
Images – photographs/graphics/combination
Outlets in which available – eg HMV, Amazon
Slogan / tagline“Freedom to be who you want to be”
Limited edition. Digipak/standard
“out now” / “debut album”
offers – free download if you sign up to XYZ website


TASK TWO

TASK: Upload one full page magazine advert to analyse. Address each area below in your analysis. Each group will report and compare findings with the class as a discussion

MESSAGES
What kinds of messages do we receive from the advert?
How do these messages effect our buying choices?
How do these messages effect our perception of the world around us?
What product is the ad trying to sell? (Other than the product itself, what idea or message is the ad trying to sell? What is the subtext? Are there any stereotypical ideas and/or subliminal messages that can you identify?

TARGET AUDIENCE
Who is the target audience? Explain using specific demographics and psychographics.
Can you identify any emotional appeals in the ad? (sex, romance, humour, guilt, patriotism, sympathy, anxiety, anger, envy, loneliness, desire to escape etc.)
In what ways does this advert effect our ideas, attitudes or beliefs? (Example: alcohol = fun / thin = beautiful)
Are these attitudes created by advert or are they existing attitudes reinforced or made acceptable by the advert?
How does the advert catch your eye? Why did you choose this advert? What caught your attention long enough to stop and look at it?
How would you rate the overall effectiveness of the advert for its target audience? Explain your rating

Mock Exam Date and Half Term Homework

MOCK EXAM DATE: WEDNESDAY 16TH FEB in O8 p5-8

ELEANOR, EMMAK, NEELAM, MICHAELA --> MOCK EXAM DATE: MONDAY 14TH FEB in O8 p5-8


Followed by...a relaxing half term!

--> finish any outstanding work so that
you can recharge your batteries
Half term homework

ALL
• Buy a selection of music magazines
• Upload pictures of promotional adverts for album releases of your genre
• Blog what the conventions are for a promo advert for an album release
• Get audience feedback on your digipak/music vid so far: facebook, twitter, youtube, blog
• Continue editing!!

SOME
• Finish digipak and do above

Q1a Using Conventions from Real Media Texts

What could you discuss in an essay on Using Conventions from Real Media Texts?

Have a look on Pete Fraser's Blog for Inspiration, Production and Revision Tips
petesmediablog.blogspot.com

REMEMBER --> for Q1a You MUST mention AS and A2 production. Therefore, throughout your essay you’re writing about what did you do at AS and how you’ve developed into a more proficient Media student at A2

What ARE Codes and Conventions in Media?

• The media construct reality.
• The media have their own forms, codes and conventions.
• The media present ideologies and value messages.
• The media are business that have commercial interests.
• Audiences negotiate meaning in media.

Media mediate reality via the use of recognized codes and conventions, and the credibility or realism of a media text may be judged by the degree to which the audience identifies with what is being portrayed.

Media students identify three main categories of codes that may be used to convey meanings in media messages:
technical codes, which include camera techniques, framing, depth of field, lighting and exposure and juxtaposition
symbolic codes, which refer to objects, setting, body language, clothing and colour
written codes in the form of headlines, captions, speech bubbles and language style.

• the media produces meaning by using conventions
• audiences produce meaning from the interaction of the conventional material in the text, and their understanding of conventions
• the conventions that the media uses have a history - they come from somewhere and
they are responsive to historical forces
• conventions are not natural but are cultural - they have cultural specificities - they are now somewhat universal - here we can probably think of advertising...

By the term 'code' we mean a communication system which contains elements which have an agreed meaning and which can be combined according to agreed rules. This could be the English language, Morse Code, a traffic policeman's hand signals, film etc.

It is a fundamental premise of Communication Studies that all communication takes place via codes:

A code is a rule-governed system of signs, whose rules and conventions are shared amongst members of a culture, and which is used to generate and circulate meanings in and for that culture.
Fiske (1987)

A code must consist of:
• a set of signs which carry meaning
• a set of agreed rules for combining those signs together

Since it is the case that the codes we use are the result of conventions arrived at by the users of those codes, then it is reasonable to suppose that the values of the users will in some way be incorporated into those codes. They will, for example, have developed signs for those things they agree to be important, they will probably have developed a whole array of signs to draw the distinctions between those things which are of particular significance in their culture. In other words, you might reasonably expect that the ideologies prevalent in those cultures will have been incorporated into the codes used:

...'reality' is always encoded, or rather the only way we can perceive and make sense of reality is by the codes of our culture. There may be an objective, empiricist reality out there, but there is no universal, objective way of perceiving and making sense of it. What passes for reality in any culture is the product of the culture's codes, so 'reality' is always already encoded, it is never 'raw'.
(Fiske 1987)

HOW TO PLAN YOUR REVISION NOTES FOR THIS EXAM ESSAY
1) AS level --> List how you used conventions from real horror films in your film opening

FOR EXAMPLE...
- The opening credits / film title
- Setting/location
- Costumes and props
- Camerawork and editing
- Title font and style
- Story and how the opening sets it up
- Genre and how the opening suggests it
- How characters are introduced
- Special effects

2) A2 --> List how you used conventions from real music videos in your own music vid

3) Consider how you adhered to or challenged conventions from these real media texts

MAC Editing Priority Timetable

Exam Prep Q1a --> Creativity

YOUR MOCK MOCK QUESTION IS DUE IN ON WEDNESDAY 9TH FEB:

EXAM Q1a) Describe and evaluate your creative skills development from AS foundation
portfolio to A2 Advanced portfolio

Spend 45 mins (25marks)


What could you discuss in an essay on creativity?

Creativity
- What was the intended outcome of your productions? (preferred readings, promotional purposes etc)
- How were these outcomes achieved in terms of camera shot choices/diegetic or non-diegetic music etc.?
- How did you present your ideas on the blog?
- Work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding
- How did you make creative decisions about your set design, props, location etc
- What stylistic choices were made in order to appeal to your target audience?

You MUST mention AS and A2 production. Therefore, throughout your essay you’re writing about what did you do at AS and how you’ve developed into a more proficient Media student at A2

Class Discussion Ideas
- Better framing&composition – give examples
- Lighting – filmed in dark in AS. Now know to film outside for best quality – therefore, filmed by open window midday
- Filmed on flip in A2 – made montage - skills improved because added music – so edited on beat, practising skills
- AS – used torch – A2 used natural light
- Considered colours, contrasts, costumes to fit w genre
- More confident w flips therefore > experimental when filming on location
- Grown in confidence w software – imovie
- AS filmed at night w torch/phones, A2 used car to create dolly shot – full beam headlights, to create shadows: 306 degree pan to film long shot
- Using saturated colour in imovie – therefore, end product less grainy
- AS – didn’t’ consider mise-en-scene, sacrificed lighting for framing
- AS used lots of slow paced editing – this year using faster shutter speed