Evaluation | What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

When looking at audience feedback we had to make sure we got it from the right people. When beginning to create the video we looked and created our target audience who would be the people that we aimed our video at. We chose to look at students from the age of 14 to around 25 who were social and spent a moderate amount on time and absorbing the media.

We tried to gather audience feedback right from the beginning of our editing process. We did this in order to check if any parts of our video needed to be changed. We'd show a number of people one of our drafts and take notes on what they said. We'd then permit their changes to our video to see if it made an improvement, if we liked it we kept it if not we changed it back. We did this a number of times until we had no more criticisms from the people we showed. The comments people made are listed below:

• the main thing it the lyrical part of the video has been drawn in this one and we've decided it would look better if it was computer generated. It will look a lot neater and follow the conventions of others.

• the part of the video that is closest to lip syncing where the main talent is on the phone we also thought needed changing. The last part of this section goes on for too long and we think it will lose the attention of the audience

• Towards the start of the clip there are the lyrics 'I don't drink like everybody else, I do it to forget things about myself'. Originally we planned to have the beer cans jump cut section to appear here but in editing that never worked. We want to actually change this now as when we showed someone they picked up on it and suggested we change it.

• We also want to put in the voice and words you hear when you leave a voice mail when the main actor begins to speak in his phone

• The sign that Ash is holding at the ending also needs meaning to be put in it. It is the 'I <3 you' sign that is featured throughout but we got feedback that said we should just be reminded of this at the end. To get around this we will be putting a clip of the sign where you can read what it says in Claudia's flashbacks

• Feedback also showed us that the lyric section shouldn't move and instead the stills should be still with no ken burns effect on them, when looking at this again we agreed so our next draft will just contain the part being still

After we had made this changes our target audience were pleased and 95% of them enjoyed the video and 76% said they would watch it again! We tried to gather whether people understood the story behind the video and everyone we asked gave a roundabout answer as to what we intended apart from one person who thought they were brother and sister (why brothers and sisters would kiss like that baffled me but still, each to their own). 
I then proceeded to ask some people who weren't in my target audience to see if they enjoyed the video as well. I asked a selection of adults and younger children. Most adults said they enjoyed it and that it was worth watching and complimented the video nicely. It was brought up though that things like Twitter and Facebook are a foreign land to them so that part of the video seemed a little weird. 

The younger audiences that we asked didn't really like the video as they said it was dull and boring, apart from the doodle part which they said was fun! This would be the response I expect because the video isn't really meant to be visually pleasing but instead portray the story of the song, something younger audiences wouldn't understand. 

This was a really important thing for us to do because what is a media piece without an audience, we created our video for the purpose of promoting the song and artist and their would be no point to it. One thing that I've looked at is a theory by Deborah Knight who notes that satisfaction is guaranteed with genre and that the deferral of the inevitable provides the additional pleasure of prolonged anticipation (1994). This means that audiences will actually like to have an idea of what is happening and with this comes another theory by todorov who suggested that narratives follow a certain pattern every time. He stated that all stories will start will equilibrium where everything is normal, there will then be some sort of disruption which will create a conflict. A resolution with then be found creating a new equilibrium.

Our music video follows this pattern with our equilibrium at the start being the couple in a relationship, happy, we don’t see this at the start of the video but actually throughout the opening sequence through flashbacks. We then see that the disruption is that the girl is leaving for Uni, I would then say the conflict was the fact the couple will have to break up because of the disruption. The resolution is the last thing we see and is the fact that the boy is waiting for her when she is about to leave, she then runs over and hugs the boy. This is the only glimpse of the new equilibrium we get as the video finishes here but this was done purposefully so that the audience could make up their own ideas on what happens with the couple. 

Leaving it open also allows the audience to identify with the situation more as they can add in their own ending. This links into the idea of identification for personal identity being one of the audiences uses & gratifications as proposed by Bulmer and Katz. The audience will use the video to identify with themsleves, whether they have been in similar situations or whether they feel as though they are similar to the characters used.
Now I'm straying from the actual question asked! But I think we can learn as much from theories that we can from asking actual people. Though as said before audience feedback was really important during the on going process of our video as it allowed us to find out what bits weren't as good which we wouldn't have necassarily seen by ourselves! We would then make these changes and show a few more people to see if there were any more changes. We finally stopped this when people didn't have anything else they wanted to change. I think this was a much better was to do it than collecting lots of data once we'd finished our videos. At AS when I had finished my coursework I created questionnaires and asked people's opinions on my work, this led to me having lots of things that could be changed but I had fininshed so it was quite hard to do. Doing it this way in a less formal matter by just showing people the video and asking their opinion on it worked a lot better and produced a much higher standard of work in my opinion.

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

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

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

In what ways does your media product USE forms and conventions of real media products?

This video displays where in existing texts you can find some on the ideas or themes we used. Although all of the videos may not be specifically from the indie genre a lot of music video conventions are transferable across genres. You will also notice that we haven't copied them exactly, well obviously cause then it wouldn't be our video! But we did note that it's important to draw good ideas from other videos into your own as long as you put your own 'mark' on it so to say. These are all technical codes as it's all about editing, below I have written about how these techniques may be decoded by the audience (because this is what we intended when encoding them)

• Jump cuts - We used this editing technique to symbolise the passing of time and to represent him drinking his sorrows in a more humorous than serious way
• Slow motion - This editing technique was put in to make the flow of emotion happier after the believed sadness of the phone call of him expressing his love etc.. and to give the representation of the moment going slow for the girl after realising that her and Ash, the main character, were meant to be together. 
• Use of props - We really like the 'I <3 you' sign that is used in taylor swifts video and wanted to see if we could integrate this into our own work. We also wanted like a common symbol that would be used more than once in the video to create continuity. We also used this as the <3 is symbolic of love and the sign may also create connotations of love letters. This is known as symbolic coding and is used to present the audience with symbols to decode to achieve specific results
• Slow motion animation - This was used in our video as its becoming an Internet sensation! I personally have been fascinated by stop motion for some time and so always wanted to incorporate it in my work but when 'lyric videos' started to appear online in which lyrics and animations were displayed on screen using a set of stop motion clips I thought we'd be able to use it as well! So because it was becoming popular and is fairly modern we thought it a good idea to include it.

When looking at other videos I thought about how much time can sometimes be shown in as little as 2 minutes. I think this is a great feature of music videos and decided to look into it some more. I found a theory by Bordwell and Thompson that said with moving image there are often 3 different durations; story, plot and screen. In context of our video the screen duration is around 3 minutes, the plot duration could be a weekend or a single day and the story duration will have stretched to however long the couple were going out. This would be quite typical time frames for similar music videos and so this is another way we've kept to conventions.

Another convention that we've kept is the story it's self. Ed Sheeran's song is quite lovey dovey and so the story needed to represent this and not have psycho killers with chainsaws as it just wouldn't fit the genre. Instead we needed to convey a happy story. We obviously didn't do this from the start as that would be silly and the video would be boring and make people want to puke. What we actually decided to do was signify a break up the whole way through until pretty much the last few seconds in which the audience would see the happy ending. One of the main reasons for doing this is because an audience pleasure in music videos is escapism from the real world, this means the audience don't want to be left with tears in their eyes but smiling.

Something that people tend to not think too much about is the actors in the video. An extremely important convention in my eyes is to use quite attractive and desirable actors as, to put it simply, people don't want to watch ugly people. The audience will want to see people in the video that they can relate to but then also that they can aspire to be like. This is especially true with our target audience being around student again as they are influenced significantly by the media and so want respectable role models.

In what ways does your media product DEVELOP forms and conventions of real media products?

We looked into some ideas that may not actually be in music video's but in other moving images and then touched upon in music video's. An example of this is the cross dissolve that we use here..

We couldn't actually find like an exact example of this is any music video's that we had watched BUT we did see simplified versions that we developed on to get this as a result. We used this effect to signify past and present and the transition between them as this technique represents the passing of time. Removing the girl from the shot shows that the boy is now alone and represents their break-up.

Although we used the idea of the slow motion animation in how we used forms and conventions it can also go with the idea that we developed them. This is because you will normally see a video with pure animation or pure narrative/performance, not normally a mixture of the two. We decided to merge the two just to see what it looked like and to see if it worked and we and our audience believe it does. Having the animation between some of the narrative splits the video up and gives its more visual dynamics. We needed something to split up our narrative as we decided not to include any performance in the video and didn't want to bore the audience with pure narrative.

In what ways does you media product CHALLENGE forms and conventions of real media products?

This is a major convention that we went against and we decided to do this because we followed in Ed Sheerans previous ideas. In Ed Sheerans first video 'The A Team' he used complete narrative and only appeared in it himself for about a second. This video was hugely popular gaining views to date. With Ed Sheeran not being in it there is obviously no lip syncing or performance. Although we did challenge this convention we did try to include an aspect of it by having Ash mouth the words for the 'voicemail' on the song. This wasn't meant to mimic lip syncing though and was meant to signify that these were the words he was saying to Claudia. 

I tried to think of more ways in which we would have challenged the conventions but then realised why would we have? Although in my opinion challenging conventions is an essential part of music videos or in fact any media texts developing you can't challenge them too much. People like familiarity, they sometimes like to know whats coming, which seems boring but its true. If you're watching a rom com film you want there to be a happy ending cause it's what you expect, you don't want them to both get run over and die. So in this respect challenging say one convention in a video is useful because if no one ever changed anything then everything would just be the same and never modify, but simple changes is what brings about new ideas and variety. 

Evaluation Questions

• 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?

The final magazine poster!

We changed our design to this as we wanted all of our designs had more of a running theme. As the poster was meant to be promoting the album we found it necessary to have the album cover featured on here. We came to this conclusion by looking in magazines at advertisements and noticed the constant appearance.

Magazine Poster Alterations

When looking at this again and in conjunction with our Digipak we're not too sure whether it fits the scheme that we were going for. We tried to keep similarites such as the blue in the colour scheme and we also used the same font used in the Digipak but we're not sure as to whether this is a great enough link. Following this we decided to play around with some other things such as using images from our Digipak and ideas from the video to create...

This poster incorporates the images used on the cover and backcover as well as a still taken from the video. We again used the font that we have used throughout the project as well as using the similar blue that we used in the Digipak.

Ideology

What is Ideology?

A system of meanings or ideas that help define and explain the world around us and which an individual or groups holds to be true or important.

Dominant Ideologies

These are ideologies that are repeatedly shown to us by institutions such as the government, the church, education and the media.

Ideologies like these are often what we internalise as normal and begin to not even question. They become our beliefs that we live our day-to-day life around. Dominant ideologies can include ideas about gender roles, the economy and social institutions. 

What the hell is this to do with media?!

Any and all media texts retain certain ideas or beliefs that reflect ideologies which we may not always notice. An example might be the stereotypical way that gay men are presented in the media. This idea is slowly changing though as the ideology is changing to make someone that's gay more 'normal' in society.

Media texts are successful in conveying ideologies as they reach a broad audience through many different mediums. Every media text that someone watches that supports or enhances a certain ideology will further imprint that in their beliefs. Although if someones beliefs are strongly against what the media text is represent then their beliefs won't be changed and in fact they may come to resent that piece of media.

So where is the link to my work?

Thinking about controversial ideologies made myself and my partner realise that we will have to convey ideologies that won't stir trouble with our target audience. We have to make sure the way in which we represent gender (as we have both in our video) is equal and shows no inequality as this would be something that our target audience would frown upon. Although this may seem silly as well due to issues with alcohol and binge drinking up and down the country we have to represent that in a normal and accessible way as our target audience will not want to be preached to about things its inevitable that they're doing. We did this by using alcohol in quite a comical way with the beer cans appearing over him whist he stared at facebook. Our protagonist male is also feeling sad at this point, this signifies that he drank like this because he was upset and not in a normal circumstance. 

UNI | Ed Sheeran Music Video

Digipak Placing

This is explained below in a short video..

An Updated Draft

We AGAIN found some thing in this one that we want to change just to get it as close to perfect as we can. These things are:

• Towards the start of the clip there are the lyrics 'I don't drink like everybody else, I do it to forget things about myself'. Originally we planned to have the beer cans jump cut section to appear here but in editing that never worked. We want to actually change this now as when we showed someone they picked up on it and suggested we change it.
• We also want to put in the voice and words you hear when you leave a voice mail when the main actor begins to speak in his phone
• The sign that Ash is holding at the ending also needs meaning to be put in it. It is the 'I <3 you' sign that is featured throughout but we got feedback that said we should just be reminded of this at the end. To get around this we will be putting a clip of the sign where you can read what it says in Claudia's flashbacks
• Feedback also showed us that the lyric section shouldn't move and instead the stills should be still with no ken burns effect on them, when looking at this again we agreed so our next draft will just contain the part being still

UNI - first draft

This is the first draft of Claudia's and mine Music Video. I'm so happy we've finally got a draft together! We have showed a few people though and looked at it ourselves and think theres a few things we need to change:

• the main thing it the lyrical part of the video has been drawn in this one and we've decided it would look better if it was computer generated. It will look a lot neater and follow the conventions of others.
• the part of the video that is closest to lip syncing where the main talent is on the phone we also thought needed changing. The last part of this section goes on for too long and we think it will lose the attention of the audience

We want to change these and then that should be our video done! Though I wouldn't be surprised if we make the next one and then decide things need changing on that one too.

Final Digipak Cover and Backcover

Magazine Advert Drafts

Now all these drafts are pretty similar and the only really differences are the colour of words and what is said. 

 I think the one below is my favourite and probably the one I would chose to submit. I like the simplicity of it and my preference is simply the fact that the caption at the top is in white. I think this just separates it from the title and Ed's name which makes it stand out more. I also like that the crowd provide the background for the writing. As it's a shot of him performing this should draw in attention as people enjoy big events and so seeing a photo of it may trigger memories, therefore linking 'happy' and 'good' ideas with Ed Sheeran and his new album. This photo was one I took myself in Birmingham Ballroom on the 28th October.

Currently..

During the half term me and claudia completed ALL of our filming which I'm so happy about cause it now means we can begin EDITING, which is my favourite part of creating any video!

Lyric Pages

These pages would be replicated with the lyrics from all the songs appearing on the album to create a booklet in the Digipak with all the album's lyrics. This is something we found to appear in nearly every CD we looked at. We used the doodle as the background as we want to make this constant across the Digipak. We used the same font that we've used in all of the different mediums we've created. It's a very close font to Ed Sheerans personally used 'Moms typewriter'. We used quite a low key colour scheme and have tried to stick to a 3-colour scheme as this is something that is used on magazines, posters etc.

Thank you page | digipak

This is an updated version of our 'thank you' page for our Digipak. We changed it from our previous one as we wanted a common background throughout the Digipak that was eye catching and interesting rather than just have solid colour backgrounds. We've also started the colour scheme of the light bluey/green colour as we think this would be quite a typical colour of Ed Sheeran and we wanted to deviate away from the orange colour that he typically uses so not to copy him. We have also used the font that is very similar to Ed's own font and will be a font we use throughout in the video, the whole of the Digipak and the magazine poster.

digipak pictures!

This is a remake of some doodles that Claudia did. We scan in the originals and then created collages like the one above. All of the doodles we decided on by looking at Ed Sheeran's songs and taking out little symbols that represent parts of the song, the explanation of these is below..

- Wings; from the A Team lyric 'it's too cold outside for angels to fly'

- Cup of hot drink; from the Cold Coffee song, quite obviously symbolising the coffee

- The sofa; this is from Ed's song called sofa 

- The snowflake; this is a less obvious symbol and is from 'Give Me Love' and the lyric 'maybe you're lovable, maybe you're my snowflake'

- The paw print and plus sign; these were simply taken from Ed's existing ideas as he often uses these symbols himself

- Cat; this is from Ed's video for Drunk as he has a pet cat which features a large part in the video.

- Lego piece; this symbol is taken from the song Lego House

I decided to put this effect on it as I thought it was quite fitting with Ed Sheeran and the colour that it gave the page looked nice.

These two are two possible choices to put on the left inside page of the digipak.

STORYBOARD

This is the storyboard that me and Claudia came up with which depicts the ideas for our video and their order. We came up with the ideas by first having the bigger concept of the video - A boy and girl breaking up because of UNI. We then got the lyrics and started fitting some things around them.

Ed Sheeran - U.N.I lyrics

I found your hairband on my bedroom floor,
The only evidence that you've been here before
And I don't get waves of missing you anymore,
They're more like tsunami tides in my eyes
Never getting dry, so I get high, smoke away the days never sleep with the light on
Weeks pass in the blink of an eye,
And I'm still drunk at the end of the night
I don't drink like everybody else,
I do it to forget things about myself,
Stumble and fall with the head spin I got
My mind's with you but my heart's just not

So am I close to you anymore, if it's over
And there's no chance that we'll work it out

That's why you and I ended over U N I
And I said that's fine, but you're the only one that knows I lied
You and I ended over U N I
And I said that's fine, but you're the only one that knows I lied

Everybody said we'd be together forever but I know that,
I never wanna settle down, come around, break up the love like Lego now,
Never wanna turn into another like you,
Sleep with my thoughts, dance with my views,
Everything's great but not everything's sure,
But you live in your halls and I live in a tour bus,
Now I'm in a position to be another stalker like every thing I say seems to always sound awkward,
Like our last kiss it was perfect, we were nervous,
On the surface,
And I'm always saying everyday that it was worth it,
Pain is only relevant if it still hurts,
I forget like an elephant, or we can use a sedative and go back to the day we fell in love just on our first kiss

So am I close to you anymore, if it's over
And there's no chance that we'll work it out
Ohh you and I ended over U N I
And I said that's fine, but you're the only one that knows I lied
You and I ended over U N I
And I said that's fine, but you're the only one that knows I lied

Wo-ooooahhhh [x2] oohh ohh

Because, if I was gonna go somewhere, I'd be there by now,
And maybe I can let myself down, wo-oahh
And I'm thinking that I'm unaware, I keep my feet on the ground and keep looking around, to make sure I'm not, the only one to feel low,
Because if you want, I'll take you in my arms and keep you sheltered, from all that I've done wrong
And I'll know you'll say, that I'm the only one
But I know god made another one of me to love you better than I ever will

Cause you and I ended over U N I
And I said that's fine, but you're the only one that knows I lied
You and I ended over U N I
And I said that's fine, but you're the only one that knows I lied