Question 3: What have you learned from your feedback?

The main ways in which I gained audience feedback was through the use of Facebook and a discussion. I filmed two friends whilst I asked them a number of questions and recorded the results. in doing this I gained an outside perspective on my video, which allowed me to evaluate more effectively. This is the video:



Can you tell what happened in the narrative?


The people we interviewed generally said that the narrative was clear and easy to understand. They picked up on the main genre conventions, gangsters, guns, drugs etc. But they also picked up on the fact that we were trying to parody this by making them seem more childish through the use of props and mise en scene. I feel that we made the narrative clear and simple enough for the average audience to understand and to read the text in the way we had intended.

Does the performance look convincing?


Our audience seemed to say that the performance, on the whole, was convincing. This was mainly down to the actors that we picked. Picking the singer for the band was a difficult process, finding someone that could pull off the singers voice without it looking too out of place was difficult, but I believe we made the right choice. In my opinion I feel that the performance with the rest of the band members could have been more convincing, but our drummer and guitarist both pulled out last minute, forcing us to find anyone available to fill in their roles. The audience also said that our band members looked " very involved " and "as if they wanted to be there", we really wanted this to come through in the video, to make them seem genuine and at the same time fun. I feel we succeeded with this.

Does it remind you of any other music videos or media texts? 


Our feedback group told us that the video seemed more like a film than a music video. I think this is somewhat true, we tried to make our video quite story driven, whilst still keeping an element of fun. They felt that our video had many of the conventions of the gangster genre, adding to the film like feel of the text. I feel that our video is also quite unique, I haven't ever seen a music video like this, which I feel adds to the appeal.

If you could change one thing, what would it be?


When we asked this question to our audience we got two main points, more shots to explain the story, and that the lighting was sometimes a little out. We tried to keep the story side of the video strong, but we obviously needed more shots. I feel that if we had storyboarded more strongly then this aspect would have been stronger. The lighting was also difficult due to the fact that we shot it in the winter, so there wasn't a lot of daylight. This made filming difficult as we had to do lots of short shoots, which made keeping continuity hard. We also found out that the indoor strobe lit shots were not as effective as we were hoping, due to the rate of the strobe and the framerate of the camera clashing. This meant that every so often, black bars would appear randomly on the screen, meaning that we could not use all the shots.

What genre of music do you think this video is appropriate for?


Our audience told us that our video suited a reggae/ska genre. Which is definitely what we were aiming for. They also mentioned that it had elements of hip-hop and rap, through the use of microelements such as props, costumes and location.

All in all I feel that the music video went well, there were a few slip ups and continuity errors to do with lighting, but out audience seemed to enjoy it. We achieved most of the goals that we had set out to do with the music video, making it very effective.

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I believe that my product challenges the stereotypes of the reggae genre, we do include the drugs, guns, violence etc. but we turn it on it's head by replacing them with stereotypically childish things. I think our product is quite unlike any other things I've seen, I believe it's a relatively new, entropic idea.

For me, the inspiration for the idea came from watching other reggae/rap videos. The majority of them seem to contain drug use, violence, gang culture etc. The song that we created the music video for had an anti gang-culture message, so it seemed perfect to take these conventions, and turn them around to parody the genre. The research we did into the genre really helped us to form our ideas.

I  believe that challenging the forms and conventions actually helped with the success of the video within our focus group. The audience that we were aiming for enjoy new, interesting things. This really came through with our focus group's feedback. The video was not so entropic that it was difficult to understand, but not so redundant that it became disinteresting, which is what our focus group seemed to enjoy the most. I believe combining elements of the classic conventions, and the childish elements proved a good move as it was interesting and eye catching, yet was still identifiable within the intended genre.

When editing the video, we also tried to keep to the conventions of the genre. The editing is relatively slow during the beginning of the video, mimicking the editing style of slower paced reggae videos. When the faster paced, drum and bass part kicks in, the editing style quickly speeds up. This creates a more exciting feel, especially in comparison to the slower editing.

The song itself challenges the conventions of the reggae genre, the style of singing in somewhat different, and the integration of drum and bass in the end is also a big change of pace to the genre, so the product also had to reflect this.

In summary, our target audience enjoyed our product. We were told it was different and innovative, and none of them could compare this to any other music videos that they have previously seen, as they had not seen any of a similar kind. I think the new ideas were welcomed as they are interesting and different, so they are quite effective in drawing in attention.