Fred Foster, evaluation

Media Studies Product Evaluation

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

The generic conventions of a music video are very different to a film, for example. In our music video there are elements of a live performance, which is not something that is possible to replicate in the genre of film. A music video is not only for the viewers’ entertainment, it is also an effective promotional tool for an artist. A memorable music video can boost the artists’ reputation and make the brand more identifiable. It is easy for a lot of people to see the video, thanks to music channels on television and You Tube. Unlike in the film genre, a music video sells a single and is a valuable marketing device, helping artists and band managers to develop the brand of the group or artist by continuing motifs and trademarks.
I think that if you were to look at our media product as a whole, you would not be able to call it stereotypical, but you wouldn’t be able to call it non-conformist either. Judging by the Mise-en-Scene of our video, the costumes are quite generic for hip-hop artists. This was always our aim. The shades, tracksuits and jewellery successfully conform to our chosen genre. On the other hand, our locations that we used in the video are quite dissimilar to what you would normally expect from a video of this nature, as they are not hip-hop stereotypes (Locations such as forests, gardens etc.). This is the non-conformist element to our product. We balanced this with the live performance component which was far more generic and mainstream to the genre. We worked very hard to ensure that there were lots of repeated motifs (Pink shades, Iglu&Hartly logo, and pink and black colour theme) in both our video and in the ancillary texts. We were sure to include them in both the video and ancillary texts.

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

I think that the ancillary texts are a good addition to the feature music video. One of the many advantages of producing ancillary texts was that it gave is the chance to develop and continue motifs that featured in our feature video. These motifs include pictures of the artists on location in the filming of our video. Motifs are good because it helps the public identify the group and make them a more recognizable label. The use of colour in our ancillary texts is very consistent and the fonts of writing are familiar. By continual use of the Pink and Black colour theme we are building an identity for the band and boosting its publicity. It is a very good marketing technique. It could be said that the digipack represents the group quite stereotypically. It is a simplistic, minimalist piece of work, which suggests that the artists are lazy, or devote their time to the music side of things. The continuous Pink and Black theme stays true to the memorable trademark image we are trying to build.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Throughout our whole project we used a blogging website called Blogger to post information and plans associated with our project. Other groups and teachers posted regular feedback on our rough cut, final cut and ancillary texts. The most useful feedback was the Teacher feedback on our rough cut, as we were able to improve in the areas Tanya suggested. As she is a teacher we felt her opinions were most valuable, with it being quite likely that she knows what is required for a good mark! Thanks to this feedback we were able to get more close ups of performers faces, cut back and forth to different locations and get more shots with graffiti background (as this fitted the genre) edited in to our video for the Final Cut. The feedback told us what people liked and what they disagreed with in our feature video. We were then able to make changes consequently. We were a bit confused with some of the feed back because at times it was contradictory to its own views. The peer review told us overall that the cinematography and the Mise-en-Scene. One thing that was correctly highlighted was the lack of relation between visuals and lyrics, which forms part of Goodwin’s music video analysis model. However, this lack of relationship between lyrics and videos was something which did not prove to be an issue with our project, because this was a style that we wanted to convey.

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

We used our online blog to post any information for our project, to update our progress regularly, post examples of work and show our planning. Our peers and our teachers frequently post reviews of our work on our blog. It is an efficient way of keeping all of our work in one place and making it easy to access. We edited our video using Final Cut Express, which was shot on camcorder. We are lucky because Final Cut is state of the art video editing software, which allows us to put lots of professional and advanced effects and features to our music video. Thanks to Final Cut we have been able to use fades, transitions, colour tints, ghosting and glow effects. To design our ancillary products, we used gatefold cover design templates with programme called Photoshop, which allowed us to have absolute freedom in what we wanted to do. With using Photoshop there are a very wide range of options, tools and effects to choose from, as the software is so versatile.


We used You Tube to import videos on to our blog for analysis. We also uploaded our rough cut and final cut to You Tube, so that others could see it. We used iTunes, to import our song (Jump out of Your Car- Iglu & Hartly) in to Final Cut so that we could do lip-syncing professionally. We did this very well, I think. Through using Blogger we earned a prestigious accolade “Blog of the week”. It’s a competition held throughout all media studies groups. It was recognition of the whole group’s enthusiasm for the tasks set. Modern technology has definitely helped bring amateur film making to a more accessible audience. This helps the industry as there is more enthusiasm for it as a whole.