Evaluation - Media Write Up - Eden Frost

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

Our media project uses, develops and challenges different forms and conventions of real media products in several ways. We use forms and conventions of real media products through postmodernism our media video is highly post modern, it shows real life and how hard life can be sometimes with every day issues such as adultery, violence and dealing with drugs. It doesn’t show the world as a utopia.  Our product challenges forms an conventions of real media products due to the clothes we are wearing in our video. We took 'chavy' to the next level and highlighted it heavily with our clothing, makeup and some of our actions in the video.  We also challenged other music videos by The role of a male being played by a female. In other music videos no one ever plays two roles I played the male role f the rap artist "Fazer" and a girl.

Me as a boy in the role of "Fazer"

Me as a girl.

 our video we thought that would be challenging and controversial to have a female play one of the male roles.  We also took the whole 'lower class area rap artist' to the extreme by rapping in front of graffiti backgrounds and in front of blocks of council estate flats.

Graffiti Backgrunds.

Council estate like flats.

 People like Devlin and N-Dubz do the same but we made sure that every opportunity we had we made it look 'lower class'. We have developed form and conventions of real media types by dressing one of the girls (myself) as a boy this hasn’t been seen in a music video before, we used three characters to play out the whole thing which also hasn’t been done before.

This is  part of the council estate themes in devlins "runaway" music video.

What have you learned from audience feedback?

From audience feedback, we have learned that overall the approach we took towards creating our N-Dubz music video was extremely good. From the audience interviews we discovered that all of the audience liked the parody idea and found it highly comical although slightly over the top and cheesy but in a good way. Our audience liked the props we used and they thought the outfits showed “N-Dubz” (us) in a light hearted comical way with the the makeup and clothes we wore, the girls, (Toni & myself) clothing was short, tight and very “chavy” 

Tight Clothing.

whereas the boys (Harold & myself) clothing was baggy and long and large which also gives of the “chavy” image. 

Our Chavy Clothing.

The fact that I (Eden) took on the role as “Fazer” and didn’t get a boy to do it created a lot of humour, we expected this as we tried to dress myself as a boy as much as possible. This created a lot of humour due to the fact that it is out of the ordinary and we hadn’t seen it done before. We also learned that people cringed at our makeup and outfits because they were so highly over the top and that is what we wanted. The audience generally feel that we played N-Dubz well although we ended up looking nothing like them we put our own spin on It which was what we wanted out of it. Overall our audience feedback was excellent and we think we tackled the task very well.

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stage?

We used most of the media technologies in the construction, research, and planning and evaluation stages of our project. We used internet and film to plan, research and evaluate each stages of our product. In the planning stage we relied a lot on the Mac, Blogger, the internet and photo booth to help us to decide what artist to do a music video for. We used the internet to research different artists and who their target audience are. We then recorded our information on our blog using photo booth in some of our blog posts to create videos of ourselves on how far we were progressing at one time. In the construction stages we also relied heavily on the Mac and the internet because we were researching different things at different t times to decide what to and what not to put into our video next. We also used film (a camera and a tripod) in the construction stages to record our video . We used a green screen because it is helpful to take us anywhere in the world we want to be without having to actually go there. In the evaluation stages we relied heavily on our blog (the internet) which helped us peace everything together and evaluate how well our video went. Overall all of the media technologies played a part in helping us create our media product and helped us along the way depending on the different things we needed at different times.

 

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The combination of our main product and ancillary texts are very affective because all of our products link together with the dark and dingie background. It links the brick walls to N-Dubz council estate background. We carried the graffiti theme throughout our website, album cover and music video as seen on our blog posts. In our music video we put graffiti on a green screen and on our website and album cover the headings are graffiti. Other artists do the same by keeping up their image through their personalities, websites and album covers. They generally keep their house styles the same per album for example Devlin filmed a lot of his “blood sweat and beers” album on his estate where he came from which relates to his album cover which pictures him standing up against a brick wall. Our outfits also showed N-Dubz council estate background and we kept them consistant throughout.  with the dark dingie backgrounds and the graffitti themes. 

My outfits remained consistent in my boy role and my girl role. Our product is very much like other texts and that is what we were going for. Througout our website, music video and album cover we were consistent with colours, fonts, and clothing.

Written By Eden Frost.