Evaluation Questions

1) Our genre is ballad and therefore the main characteristics are that they are normally either in black and white or dimmed/darken colours. We used both of these effects as we used the black and white effect in our scenes of the singing on the piano and the dimmed coloured effect on all of the narrative scenes. We chose to keep this convention as it fits well with our video and in some places we had some really strong colours in some scenes that clashed with the music. Another convention is that they are slow paced videos. We did use some long scenes however not all of it was slow. We tried to use as many shots as possible but with them still fitting with the music. We also tired to make sure all of the cuts were on the beat which i think we achieved well. Ballads normally don't have much intertexual references therefore we tried not to as well however they do have some voyeurism. We tried doing this by making it so that you are watching the angel in places you normally wouldn't see them and when she is sitting on her own and vulnerable. We made the lyrics and visual link together by literally following the lyrics and having a real angel. We also made the word angel appear or link every time it is said, for example the word made out of alpha-betti spagetti. I looked at the video 'wherever you will go' by Charlene Soraia and this video uses most of these concepts for example the colour is very dark when looking at the piano and the shots are all quite slow, however there is no narrative in this video whereas ours there is a lot. I also looked at Ellie Goulding 'Your Song' which has the same amount of narrative as ours however this video is slightly faster paced. We took things from both of these videos however developed on them to make a slightly slower paced narrative with black and white shots of just the singing. Our digi-pak also follows these conventions by being in black and white. We have her smiling and a close up of her face this was a demand of the record label as we made a social character for her where she looks happy, innocent and friendly.

2) I think that our product links well with our ancillary texts as we keep the theme of an angelic innocence. In the music video Holly is wearing angel wings which is where the original theme came from. To make sure our CD wasn't just for the video we had the front of it have her looking up with a slight smile and of just a close up of her face instead of her in the angel wings again. This gives her the angelic look needed to fit the theme as she looks innocent and sweet, the fact that she isn't wearing angel wings means that this image links to all of her songs not just Angels. On the back we made it so she did have wings but they were made in a very different way. We made these wings in the dark using torches this then means it does not link too strongly to our video however does have a link that's needed. Our magazine ad has the same effect as the front cover of the CD as it only uses Holly looking angelic and to the side therefore both to the CD cover and to the music video. We also made all of the CD and magazine ad in black and white. This adds to the angelic look and also adds another links to our video as we used black and white and dimmed colours on all of the shots. We create the image of our artist being innocent, happy and a friendly character. I think we attract our target audience well as we don't use bright colours and we use sweet images that most people would admire.

3) Our feed back was getting better as the making of the video went on. Our feedback at the very beginning was that we had a good idea however had to be careful not to make it boring and to make sure it linked with the music. After our rough cut many people said that they didn't quite understand the concept of the video and why she was wearing wings. They also said that our stop motion looked really good but didn't really fit with the video. We decided that they were right and therefore removed the stop motion and added shots of holly singing and playing the piano. We had more of these shots which meant we able to cut out some of the more boring pieces of narrative and make the video more interesting to watch and less narrative based. We then got feed back from our final cut and i was really pleased. Now that there were less narrative pieces and no stop motion they understood the concept better and liked the performance shots. One thing was said about the fact that sometimes in our video the song peaks and becomes dramatic however our video does not but instead stays the same. They said they would prefer for something more interesting to happen in those moments and I completely agree with them. I also think that we needed more performance shoots of Holly on the piano as sometimes the video can get boring as she isn't necessarily doing anything however i am really pleased with the comments we got and with our video.

4) The first piece of software we used was blogger. We used this software for all of our planning and research. After finding different things on the Internet and videos from youtube we were able to post about them on blogger. this was a great way to keep all of the groups work together and so that all of us could access it at home. It also allowed us to post videos and images to make the work more interesting. We then used the HD cameras. These cameras were easy to use and were great quality.As they were easy to hold we were able to film in Cambridge at busy times. We used the tripod on nearly all of our shots to make sure they were all still and steady and were able to get some really good shots. We then uploaded the videos on to the Mac's and used Final Cut. This software allowed us to do nearly everything. We were able to change the colour of all of our clips and put them in the order and length that we wanted. There were a couple of things we would have liked to have added however could not figure out how / couldn't do on final cut. We also used iStopmotion to captures things such as scrabble moving on its own. We used this to create the lyrics in different ways and found it was really simple to use however took a long time to get right. We also used a DSLR camera for a photo shoot for the digipak. Luckily the camera was my own therefore i knew how to use it in the way that we wanted which allowed us to use a slow shutter speed to make wings out of light however if we didn't know how to use the camera then would have not have been able to do what we wanted and our creativity would have been limited. We edited all of our photos on Photoshop which was slightly frustrating as we didn't know how do to what we wanted and sometimes it didn't come out as we were hoping it would. We were able to change the images into balck and white and change other aspects of them as well as adding what we needed such as texts and other images. Photoshop did slightly limited what we wanted to do however we were still able to do most of what we wanted. All of the software and hardware we used was really good and we were able to do most of the things we wanted with everything and if we had more time we would have been able to do more. Overall i am pleased with both our video and our digipak.