Evaluation Question 4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Whilst we have been making our music video, we have had to use new media technologies. Without these new media technologies, we would not have been able to research plan or make our music video.

Here is the hardware that we used to make our music video. In the image above is a Windows Vista desktop, screen, mouse and keyboard. Windows vista computer is our media editing computer used to create our music video and editing our work on the computers. Without the computer none of our work could have been created on the computer and uploaded onto blogger. USB stick is another technology that I have used frequently. The USB stick lets me easily transport my work from home to school. Without this it would not be possible to work from home and school so easily on the same piece of work. If I did not have a USB stick I would have to work on one piece at home and one piece at school and send them between the school and my homes systems, making it more difficult and more time consuming. Our video camera is the other main technology we have used, this lets us capture in real life action onto film. Without this technology we would not have any footage to be able to edit on. A video tape is the storage of the film, where the film is recorded. If we did not have a film tape it would not be possible to capture and look back at footage. We have also needed to use a charger, for when the camera is not in use the camera would need to charge its battery so that we had enough battery to film all day. If we did not have a charger to charge our camera we would only be limited to a certain amount of time filming and would have to buy a new battery every time making our filming expensive. To capture the footage from our camera to the computer an fire wire would needed to be used. If we did not have the fire wire, capturing from our camera to our computer would not be able to happen, making editing not possible and not letting us finish of making our music video. Other alternative methods are available though the USB cable, or wirelessly send the data to the computer. We also used our mobile phones, a communicational device so that we are able to talk to one another about our work and organise events for filming. If we did not have this device, communication between us would become a lot harder when we are further away from each other and organisation for filming days would be a lot harder. Also by having mobile phones with us it means that we can contact anyone of our members and actors when we need to. The tripod we used when filming, the tripod kept the camera still and steady so that we could get a clean transition from one shot to another making the movement of the video camera very clean. If an tripod was not used we found that the movement of the camera would be very jagged therefore what was filmed was not very good. We also used a camera to take real life photos of the different locations we had been too & documented what equipment we had used. This media technology visually lets us view in real life what has happened, if the camera wasn’t used it would have made it hard to document the different places we had been to.

By using the Computer this has enabled us to create our work on certain pieces of software, and being able to type out our work rather than write, making our work electronic. By doing this it has made the progress of our work much faster. Without this technology the speed of our work would be much slower and the quality also would not be as professional. This is due to not using certain set- out templates and would look neater than being written or printed out. Also being able to make our work electronic this lets use more multimedia functions, such as adding on videos/ images/links onto our work making it more visual and interesting.

The main piece of software that has been used to document our work is ‘Word’. Here we would write up our findings, make tables, format and copy & paste images into a word document. For example making a logging book.

We have also used ‘Paint’, to edit images on. Without this software I would not be able to create an image for the log book. With this piece of software I would copy and paste a screen shot of the logging book from word into paint, crop and resize this image and save so that my work from word can be saved as a digital image.

I have also used much more complex editing software such as fireworks, Microsoft Photo Premium 10 & Arcsoft Photostudio for editing images. If I did not have this software available I would not have been possible to create any advertisement for our website and would have not been possible to create the ancillary task of the album cover.

The other main software that we have used is the Adobe premiere pro Cs4, and video editing software. This software lets us capture our footage from our camera, and edit the film to our main music video. This software can cut the film so that only certain parts of the film are shown. Slow down and fasten up parts of our video to create a slow mo effect. We have also from this software learnt how to add effects onto our video. Without this software we would have not be able to create a music video. We would have just only had loose footage that would not have been any use to us.

We used the internet as a technology to research about previous music videos & album covers to use in our analysis and to base our music video/ album cover on something. We looked at the different types of album cover (narrative, performance and concept) and how each of these worked picking out different features for each. The websites that we would have used here would have been YouTube for the videos and Google Images for album covers. http://www.youtube.com/,  http://images.google.co.uk/

I have also through the internet searched information about certain artist. I researched Lily Allen through the internet, looking at her MySpace page http://www.myspace.com/lilymusic , to use as research for our MySpace page. Due to that we choose that we wanted one of our ancillary tasks to be a website for the band. We created an account on MySpace Music and used this website to create their webpage.

We also used the internet to research the band ‘Take that’ for our star image, websites that would have been used here would have been searching through a search engine Google, http://www.google.co.uk/.

We have also used blogger, a blogging site to electronically document our progress of us making the media package (Music video, album cover and website), https://www.blogger.com/start  . This has been effective due to that our coursework is not paper based therefore it is quicker to create work and document it; the work only needs to upload onto the internet, not rather being printed out time again.

Also we have used the socializing network face book to organise events for our media through sent messages and used instant messenger to help each other with the work if not in school, http://www.facebook.com/ . If the internet which is a new media technology was not available to use, we would not have been able to document our work or neither make our website.

Evaluation Question 3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We found from our audience’s feedback through our questionnaires, overall we got a fairly good results. We found that 9 out of 10 people keep interest throughout our video. The common answer for this was due to that the audience wanted to carry on to the end of the video to find out what happen at the end of the story. So at the begging of our planning this was the intended purpose of the story so therefore I think it has performed its task very well. The other answer that was given was ‘kind of’, so this proves to use that our music video can aim at the majority of people and keep interest on the artist. But there may always be someone who does not like the style of our music video.


We found that the impression of what our music video gives off about the band is that they belong to a rock genre. Also we found out through our music video that we reflected the bands personality and their relationships, of that this is a casual, fun, young band. From one example of our questionnaires they put, ‘the band don’t take themselves to seriously, enjoy having a laugh and like being involved during the filming of their own videos.’ We also found that the audience of the band thought that the performance was good but someone did find the band too friendly and boring at times.

The most common answer to where will you mostly likely see this music video was the internet, giving examples like, ‘ You tube and new music websites.’ This tells me that using a My Space website as our ancillary tasks was the right choice to make, due to that most people will search on the internet for new artists. Therefore our advertising within our website to buy merchandise and their new single is more likely to reach out to people that on TV. Although 2 people did say TV and the answers they gave were, ‘4music, Viva, free view channels or MTV channels.’

Everyone we found understood the story of the video. An example of an answer, ‘love story, the guy cannot tell the person he loves that he loves her.’ This tells us that through the audience understanding the storyline that the story must have had clear visuals throughout the video for everyone to understand what is going on. Due to a typical love story has been involved I think that this has help people to understand the story due to that it is something that people would recognise. So therefore will be easier to pick up on the storyline.

This brings me onto that the audience also therefore thinks that the Lyrics ands the visuals link together very well. So through the lyrics we have used them to tell a story so therefore this has been acted out on screen. So then having lyrics and visuals that are matching on screen, this makes it very clear to the audience of what the story is about.

Through the music of the song the majority of the people thought that the music fitted with the visuals of the song. An opinion of this was that when the emotions arise within the music visual, they pick in the music & can be identified through the lyrics as well. Another example, ‘the music certainly fits the visuals as the editing has resulted in the pace and cutting being inline and in time. Two other opinions was that the music video did not fit in with the visuals due to the music was too upbeat for the music video.

We also found through asking our audience that they found that our music video was up too very high quality. Reasons for this are that quality of the editing & storyline made the video look very professional, and that the music video was free flowing, clean cut and well presented. Improvements have also been included in how to get our music video to good quality. Theses ideas where, ‘ could be made more interesting by making clips shorter.’

We found that 5 people would like to buy this single after watching this music video. We got 2 maybes and 3 No due to that this is not there type of music, so would not be interested in buying that music. So therefore not all genres of music can acquire to all peoples tastes. But one no did say that the promotion of the artist and single was good.

We also wanted to find out even after they have watch our music video, would they become fans of the artist after viewing there music video? For this 4 people said yes, that they would monitor further releases & they would want to hear there next single. For the No’s again was for the reason that this music was not their taste in music, that the genre did not suit them or maybe was too cheesy.

The improvements that were stated from our audience were that the acting skills of the actors should be improved. There should be more variation in band shots and more transitions used, more interesting action/colourful storyline throughout the video. Shorter clips should be used to make more impact, better lip sync but is very hard to do & the singer should look more comfortable and enthusiastic when singing.

Evaluation Question 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

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