Evaluation Question 4

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Feedback that we received whilst researching and planning our main product and ancillary texts was very useful. The feedback which we obtained from the online survey that we created and the interviews which we conducted was key to deciding what features we would include in our digipak and crucial to controlling the mise en scene in our products

At the end of our music video we attempted to re-create the image on the album cover for Let Go. We had our actor who was playing Avril to stand in a shopping centre (a location which features in some of Avril's other video's) and sped up the footage. This creates the the idea that Avril Lavigne stands out amongst 'ordinary' people and that she is or feels 'different'.

When we finished editing our music video, we uploaded it to Youtube and then posted it on Twitter and Facebook to generate feedback.

 

This feedback was somewhat useful, and we took some of the comments into consideration. However, some comments were not taken seriously but this was to be expected from posting on Facebook as the people are not necessarily Avril Lavigne fans. This is why we later posted the video on the Avril Lavigne forums, so that is was accessible to Avril Lavigne fans.

To expand on this, the image above is the results from one of the questions in our survey. We asked this question because we didn’t know what to feature on the second disc in the digipak, We used these results directly and included ‘behind the scenes footage’ in the digipak. Without this feedback from our target audience, we would not have been able to make a product with quality content which our audience would appreciate.

From our initial research we concluded that Avril Lavigne had two very different styles, we thought this was important to our products because each style may have had different audiences. From our survey feedback, it became apparent that the majority of Avril Lavigne fans admired or preferred her older style which she presented with her first album Let Go. This style was very urban and punk rock with the images she used to present herself for example the way she dressed, the makeup that she wore, her style of music etc. However, a bigger percentage replied saying that they liked both of her styles, we couldn’t ignore this so we realised that we must include some conventions from her more recent pop music.
This helped us to plan the costumes for our music video and the images that we would use on the digipak.

Post production, we created another survey to find out people's thoughts on our music video. Many of the responses were very useful, especially on how to improve the video as it was hard for us to fairly judge this.

We recieved 36 responses to our survey, here is a few comments in answer to the question "What would you have improved on if you were involved in making the video?" :

The font which we use on our advertisement and digipak links not only to our main product but also to Avril Lavigne's image. The font looks as though it has been sprayed/grafitied using a stencil. Firstly this relates directly to our music video as one of the band members is seen doing grafiti. Secondly this represents Avril's urban, gritty image that she portrays with her old punk-pop style. There is also a similar font in one of her newer videos Smile which means this style is not out of touch with her new and most recent one.

Throughout all our products and Avril Lavigne's there is use of her logo of a star:

Using this star logo in our products provides a subtle but strong link between the main product and ancillary texts and also connects our work with Avril Lavigne's.

In the studio, we directed our actor to pose in positions which were similar to studio images that we had looked at of avril online. We liked the pictures of her grabbing her hair because it presents a rebellious/crazy image of avril lavigne which is something that is associated with her older style and fans. This is important because it links our products to Avril Lavignes.

 

 

Our product purposely does not challenge forms and conventions of real media products. The artist that we are doing generates quite a young audience this is one reason why the product should not challenge as younger audiences will want clarity in their product. As the majority of the audience is young, Avril is also seen as a role model which is another reason why our product shouldn’t challenge forms and conventions. The genre of Avril Lavigne is Pop/Pop-Punk which is a very mainstream genre that is heavily and carefully produced to appeal to majority, consequently we thought that it was more appropriate to follow conventions of real media products.

Our main product uses and develops conventions of typical music videos. In pre production we watched lots of different Avril Lavigne music videos so that we could the follow similar forms and conventions. Here are some screen grabs of our Music Video and Avril Lavigne’s to illustrate the ways in which we followed similar conventions:

One common convention of music video's is the close up shot. The image on the right is a still shot from our video and the image on the right a still shot from Sk8er Boi, the actor who we got to play Avril Lavigne is looking straight into the camera just as Avril is on the left, the importance of this shot in a music video is the closeness it creates between the singer and the audience.

This image compares the theme of both Sk8er Boi and our own video. The content of both the music video's shows rebellion. The image above on the left captures a character after grafiting on the side of a building, our own take on this was on a much smaller scale but still conveys the same theme of rebellion. The location of this is also very fitting as it is surrounded by bricks which is a very urban look, this is a style which also occurs in the official Sk8er Boi video.

The above images are an example of another way that we followed conventions of real music video's like Avril Lavigne's Sk8er Boi. Our characters are sat in the back of a car, Avril is in the centre as she is the main focus of the video. The scene was shot handheld so that the outcome was unsteady as this represents the unsteadyness and rebellion of the situation.

The top image is our final advert. We altered our initial advert because the text at the top was edging out of the frame. we also changed the text 'Best damn hits' because there was too much red on the advert.