Tuesday 8 May 2012

A2 Evaluation


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

One way in which my media product uses forms and conventions of existing types of similar products is through set location. Our target audience was an age group off 7 up to 11 years old. Bearing this in mind, choosing the set had to be relatable to the audience intended. Our product was to be a children’s TV drama opening sequence we needed to choose a location that the audience will recognise. We chose to set it in a high school as the audience will recognise the type of scenery.


 With them recognising the location they can then relate to the aspects of school life and recognise stereotypes in school life. Many similar products that influenced us have used school settings, such as ‘Kerching!’. By using the school setting for the majority of the show it allows the audience to get familiar with the place and also relate to the age group. It also allows for their own experiences come in play to work situations out during the show.

The characters were based on influences from other media types using stereotypes of students. We chose four stereotypes to create characters on, who were introduced in our opening sequence. The four stereotypes were; a popular girl, a sporty girl, a geeky girl and a school bully who was male. Each character was introduced in a way that would portray their traits. For example the popular girl is seen in the girls toilets doing her make-up and hair, she also wears fashionable clothing to reinforce the popular look. Using this stereotype shows the audience this characters specific role in the programme. It also gives an idea of what to expect this character to be doing.


A direct influence from an existing media product is ‘Hannah Montana’ from Hannah Montana. Although this programme is not set or visits a school, she is a very popular girl not only with the characters on screen but with the audience that we have targeted. With our target audience severely recognising this character, she was perfect to base our own popular girl, Izzi,  on. As well as the clothing and make-up used for our character, the stage directions made her blow a kiss towards the camera. This makes the audience recognise that she acknowledges her audience and that she likes them, as if to say ‘come and be my friend’. This will make the target audience take a key interest in the character and look forward to what the character will bring to the programme.

Our final media product used similar conventions seen in existing products through fonts, colours and editing, for each character there are different fonts, colours and transitions used to give them more of an identity than what they already have. For example, the sporty boy, Max is introduced with a bold, blue simple font.  The bold and simpleness of the font gives the character a ‘no messing around’ sense. This means that he knows what he wants and he can do it, straight forward and to the point. Having fancy writing could have taken away the more masculine side to him. Using the blue colour also gives him the masculinity as blue is widely seen as a dominantly male colour. Izzi’s font is more of a fancy font as we have used a calligraphy styled font. This makes it come across more girly. The colour is white which gives it a modern look. The font also comes in with a sparkly effect again to show the femininity of the character. When it came to transitions we decided to use fast paced transitions to match the face paced attitude that would be expected to be seen in our product and in other typical children’s TV shows.



A good example of this type of editing is seen in most of the ‘S Club 7’ programmes, such as; ‘L.A.7’ and ‘Hollywood 7’. Each character is shown individual when their names appear on screen, as they  do in our product. Following these editing techniques allowed us to follow closely the existing products to make ours appealing to the target audience.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
Firstly my logo is the biggest link between my print based media is the logo. Using this logo makes my product recognisable to my target audience, which is important because without a recognisable logo the products don’t come across as professional.

 Although my magazine cover and DVD’s don’t match up identically or have a particular consistent colour scheme, you recognise them through the use of the logo. The use of promotion photographs were also used on my magazine and DVD. I used the same group photos as the products are the first set to come out, i.e., magazine issue 1 and season 1 on DVD. Having some of the same photos has a similar effect to the logo. The photos were of the characters of the programme, and therefore I chose to have the characters dress the same as in the opening sequence. This makes the characters easily recognised from a far distant. I differentiated my photos for my magazine by mainly focusing on one character, Izzi.

This was to draw in the wider range of audience that watch children’s TV drama. I mainly found that females tend to watch it more than boys and therefore are more likely to buy the magazine more so than boys, so by concentrating on Izzi for the first issue brings in this audience and it will make the boys more quizitive about the magazine.  The next issue was to then focus on Max, the sporty character to then bring in the male target audience.
What Have You learned from your audience feedback?
in order for me to gain audience feedback, I link my product up to social networks, as this would give me the appropriate feedback that I would need. The social network sites that I used were Youtube and Facebook. Youtube allowed me to post my video online and so that  vast amount of people were able to see it and comment on the video. Using Facebook also allowed people to view my video and comment. This made receiving me feedback manageable.


   
    o        awesome :3
o    I like how it doesnt look overly grown up and it has a simple font within the slides, it also has simple transitions which dont take your eyes away from the scene too much, it was quite fun and child friendly
o    the music is quite happy so it doesnt depress the child and makes you want to watch it
Above is feedback that I collected from Facebook about my opening sequence. I got positive feedback which showed that my product hit my criteria and will ultimately attract my target audience. Other comments I got back about my video included “…the characters also meet to the expected stereotypes…”  “…the choice of location is key to how children react to programs they watch, and you have shown a good understanding of this and executed it really well.”

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
I used many media technologies to achieve my research, planning and evaluation. Through my research I used a lot of images and examples of the media types that I was going to be producing. By using these means, it meant that when I analysed the examples I got a clearer understanding of how to make my products more appealing to my target audience. Surveys also helped me to get a clear idea of what my target audience actually look for in the types of media I was producing.

 I went through survey monkey to do this as it makes the persons who answer anonymous and will give a more honest and reliable answer.The use of the internet allowed me to use Youtube and other similar websites to research existing products on.  For my planning I was able to use Microsoft publisher to plan my ancillary drafts to get the rough idea of what I want, and I then moved over to Photoshop to get a better quality of product.

To construct my media products I used Blogger to order my planning and to keep check of what was the next step. I used HD cameras to capture the perfect images from my main and ancillary tasks. I used Photoshop to manipulate my still images for my DVD and magazine; this gave me a greater quality of image and allowed me to make the photos look more professional.

 I used an Apple Macbook to organise my video and other files to various programmes that have been vital in creating my product. IMovie allowed me to edit my opening sequence.

I was able to put the chosen fonts and colour schemes on, chose a selection of transitions to suit my product, it allowed me to add music to the product to give it a more professional feel and it also allowed me to choose the way in which the scenes were ordered and how smoothly they ran together. By using such a good application, it gave me the opportunity to upload myy final piece onto blogger and Youtube to gain feedback.