Directors comments.

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

•         In a standard pop music video you would expect to see certain conventions. As our song was a pop song, these conventions can be found in our video. For example, in a pop song, a lot of the focus is on the artist and although the angles change they all focus on the artist. We have incorporated this into our music video and all of the focus in on the artist. By doing this, it makes the audience feel like they can relate to the artist. 
•       We have also incorporated the theme of bright colours. This makes the video engaging and is a convention of pop music video's. After looking into Rihanna's and Will.i.am's previous music videos, we found out that they all have a sense of abstract about them. We have tried to incorporate this in our own music video. An example of this is the use of UV paint. This gives the video a abstract feel and we combined this with the bright colours which developed our video.

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

•       The music video by itself is effective but when you combine this with the support of the ancillary texts the combination is very effective and really sums up their connection. Without the support from our planning and ideas, to some people the music video wouldn’t make sense. So making the planning and our ideas clear, it makes it easier to understand our ideas behind the music video and why we created it in the way we have.
•           By combining the planning with example clips as we produce them. For example, when we thought of the idea with the lip syncing and using the green room, we tried out a few ideas to give us some examples of what it was going to look like and from that, whether or not it was something we would like to include in our video.
•          The combination of our main product works very well with the texts behind it because it shows how our ideas have progressed and what we thought worked well and what didn’t.

3.      What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

•       After getting peoples feedback on our music video I have learnt that different people like different things about music videos. For example some people will like the colourful effects that we have used and others may not be too keen on it.
•          Also after gathering people’s feedback I’ve also realised that people feel differently towards music videos depending on their sex. For example it was said in our feedback that ‘reference to not being too sexualised - like the fact that they can relate to the artist’. By doing a Rihanna video, she has always been known as a very glamorous artist and girls crave to be her. From the feedback we learnt that by making the main characters ‘approachable’ it makes the video more popular with a wider audience and therefore has a bigger fan base.  

4.      How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? 

•            When it came to the construction of our music video we used as many different edits on final cut express that we thought that it improved the overall look of the video and added a unique feel to it which is what we wanted to achieve.
•            During the planning of our music video, we used a variety of different techniques which could have been used with lots of different varieties of technologies. For example, we had to put extra planning into thinking about how we would be able to film in the darkroom and how this would look. We practiced used the blacklight in the darkroom and what this would look like with the UV paint.