Evaluation

We believe that there aren’t many comparable music videos to ours by this we mean our music video doesn't endorse the use of drugs it condones it. So we think our music video challenges other media products by telling teenagers the harmful effects of drug abuse.

However we’re not saying that all rock bands endorse the use of drugs we’re just saying that when you read interviews of famous rock stars such as slash in Q magazine he talks about how he used to snort cocaine everyday or when they watch skins and they see them doing drugs at parties. Some impressionable teenagers will read this and think its perfectly acceptable to snort cocaine on a daily basis so we made this video to educate teenagers of the harmful effects drug abuse can cause.

However teenagers believe that being in a music video is all sex and drugs because that is how the music industry portrays it by making video articles and printing articles such as the interview with slash that portrays drug use as this glamorous activity that all rock stars indulge in. This is why we decided to make a video on the negative effects of drug use to balance the scales in a sense by making teenagers aware that drugs are not glamorous because they can cause serious physical and mental health issues.

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

My anchillary task is effective in my opinion and it links well with the music video itself. However if I had made the CD cover and poster after I made the music video they probably would have been slightly different and linked with the music video even better.

Firstly as I had planned to use my friend Amy in the music video as the female protagonist and the singer of the music, I decided that she would be good to use for my anchillary tasks. She is multi-talented in the way that she can sing well, act well and is photogenic. Also she is very reliable so I knew that she wouldn’t let me and my partner down. I then set up a place where the shooting of the photographs would take place. For this I used a back drop that was brown but patterned. I chose this because the effects of LSD which is a drug that me and my partner chose to portray in our video makes you see things patterned and different to how you would usually and out of my choices of back drops I made the decision that this would show those effects the best.

How effective is the combination of your main products and your ancillary task?

The props that I used and the costume was very important as they created an image that would represent the mood of the video. As the singer is meant to take drugs I put her in sunglasses, this is because I wanted to connotate that she takes drugs and that she needs to cover her eyes so that she doesn’t look so bad. The reason that she would look bad is because when taking drugs it changes the appearance of your eyes and I thought that if she wore sunglasses it would show this more. Many drug users wear sunglasses because of this reason. In our video we didn't make her wear sunglasses but we did make her rub her eyes and wash her face making the audience think that something was wrong with her eyes and that she was trying to wake herself up from the hallucinations she was having. When I photographed Amy for my ancillary task I asked her to dress plainly and to wear a denim jacket which on some of the covers I emphasised as I thought that it is an important rock look. This was to make the audience think that she didn’t care about her appearance like most drug users. By using props and costumes in this way I was trying to make the audience aware that if you take drugs you can be easily spotted because of your appearance and especially how your eyes look.

There is a ghostly effect that I have used in a photograph on my anchillary task using adobe Photoshop and I have also used it on a section of my music video. I used this effect because the drug LSD can create this and so I wanted to represent it.

The title that I chose for my digi-pack is ready set go. The denotation of this is a traffic light which I layered onto my front cover, the connotation of this is that she is taking the drugs and is ready to go.

From my audience feedback we have gathered a lot of useful information about our music video. Firstly they said we had used a good range of props in particular most of the audience liked the mask that we used one person stated that the mask was a very imaginative way of showing the audience the main characters hallucinations. They also liked the camera angle we used for the mask scene they said it was effective in showing the audience how the drug is changing her metal state by this we mean her looking into the mirror and seeing her face change. One audience member also liked the ghost and blackout effects. They said we used this effects effectively because it showed the audience the different symptoms of drug abuse.

The audience also liked the way we mixed conceptual clips into our drug themed narrative. Specifically the thought of repeating the clips of our main protagonist gave the video a very creepy, scary and conceptual vibe which is what me and my partner wanted to show. They also liked how these laughing clips linked together to create a dream like sequence. They also liked the repetition of the male protagonists face as they said it made them think that the two characters were linked in some way.

Our audience also liked how towards the end of the video the tempo picked up. They enjoyed this because it made them think that because the clips the were moving quicker that the drug was taking more of an effect over the female protagonist.

Finally they said sets that we used seem genuine. They said it seemed as though the characters fit in well with the sets and scenery.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

During the construction we used two camera’s this helped us produce our video twice as fast because it allowed us to film two different shots at the same time. During the construction we also used mobile phones and e-mail to decide what times we were free to film and to send each other pieces of work that we used to help film our video i.e. equipment lists, storyboards, costume lists etc. throughout all of my coursework I constantly used computers. We mainly used the editing software (adobe premier element 8) to edit our video clips, we used Microsoft applications such as PowerPoint, word and excel so that we could present our work in an electronic form plus it also allowed us to make eye catching presentations and allowed us to take our results from our questionnaires and turn them into pie charts that are easier to read. Also instead of printing out our work and stick it into a folder we were allowed to create a blog where the examiner can look at and mark our work in an electronic format. Finally we also used PowerPoint to answer the evaluation questions and me and my partner also made a director’s commentary because we thought that this would be an interesting way to tell the audience what we thinking and why we used certain shots. To do this we used a Dictaphone and we then imported the sound clips into our video.

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