There are various ways in which our media product uses conventions of real products in the media. For example, rock music videos rely on the genre of the song and stick to it. The typical features in music videos include frequent band shots (though we have decided not to show the band image), quick cuts (editing which reflects the pace/beat of the tune), low key lighting and a clear narrative which reflects the emotion of the song. We feel that we have successfully included all of these elements in our video, showing our use and clear understanding of intertextuality. When planning our music video we wanted to make it as successful as an existing music video, by doing this we had to plan very careful due to the target audience, camera angles, setting, characters, costumes etc. Sammi and I decided we wanted to make an video that was like usual rock music video's, we wanted to make it exciting and interesting to watch with a actual storyline that can relate to an certain audience. We also decided that by wanting to do an actual storyline, we should have proper characters to convey a dramatic tension to our horror themed video. We didn't want the band to appear in the video due to the effect the story will have without scene's which are uneccessary. We thought the song we chose was a strong rock track which helped it be an successful music video. As existing music video's, charcters costume's are casual and simple. We put Steph in jeans and a white top, and finished it with a rock styled leather jacket connecting it to the rock themed. As mysterious, dark music video's are appeared for rock/metal video's, the main character is put in all black to make them look dangerous. As our video is about Luke stalking his ex girlfriend, Steph we thought it was a perfect idea to make the character, Luke was playing, was 'creepy'. Our understanding of intertextuality is shown through our use of Todorov's theory. It is shown from the beginning that Steph is happy and in control of the break up of their relationship, then it switches to Luke being in control when chasing after her in the woods. At the very end Steph gets that control back when she pushes him to the edge when he ends up actually hurting her.. (equilibrium-disequilibrium-equilibrium). Both characters have had the control throughout the video making it successful.
As you can see in this picture of music video Decode by Paramore, Hayley Williams is wearing casual clothes, which doesn't take the focus off the music video as a whole. Many people commented that this idea of ours was successful. One of the highlights of our music video is that there is a balance between the use of typical rock conventions and the use of unconventional elements. We utilized only the generic conventions of rock music video's so that the audience can recognise that certain genre their interested in. In many teenaged music video's, a car is used as the video's prop. The car was an excellent way to get the story from one setting to the other. It worked well. Due to the setting of the woods, Sammi and I thought it was a perfect way to create our horror themed video. The woods clearly shows that the two characters are alone which connects to many music videos from any genre. In most videos the characters seem to come across as their the only two characters in the world. By this effect of them being alone in this massive place, the tension from the audience builds as they want someone to see whats going on and they want someone to stop Luke from following her, being as angry as he is, they don't know what he will do to Steph. Sammi and I feel that we have challenged our use of lighting, in different ways due to setting the video in a woods with natural light, which variate our shots. An appropriate use of lighting is important in videos portraying the mood of anger, darkness and depression, which is why we have used dark costumes instead, so a clear link to our video shows how we have challenged real media conventions in many ways. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
To relate to our music video, we designed a digipak and magazine advert. By using a sand timer in our digipak relates to the title and album name 'time is running out'. 
When taking the photo, I made sure the sand was about to run out. And then with the magazine advert we related the video by taking images of the woods. This makes the audience feel excited about seeing the video as it doesn't give much away of what the video will be about. It was important to have the same theme throughout all of the three products we produced. As i have already explained on my blog that Muse does not use their image as a band to promote their work, they are a very famous band and very successful so their songs sell themselves. As we knew this we thought what we had produced with the advert and CD cover was successful and could be an actual CD cover used for an album. 
As normal magazine adverts appear with the band on the front, again Sammi and I stuck with the image of Muse and how they don't show themselves, not even in their videos. By also making sure all three products were connected in some way, with the same theme, we used the same kind of font and the same colours to draw viewers attention. It is very important that the audience will be attracted to our chosen image and Sammi and I think we have successfully done this. All three products have to link together well and that they stay within our chosen genre, Sammi and I could of easily slipped up on this task due to just one mistake. And that is why we made sure we selected a font and font colour that we could use on both the magazine advert and digipak.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
By placing many polls on my blog, my audience was able to give me their feeback this way. The feedback from the audience was mostly positive which was a plus for Sammi and I. But we also got critizism, this helped us improve our work that we had already done on our blogs. As we were able to see the rest of the groups blogs, we could compare each others works and give feeback to each other on what we could work on. Our critizism was mostly from our teacher, which was that Sammi and I could use some flashback shots to appear in our beginning sequence of our video. As you can see it looks much more effective and it is clear to the audience that their flashbacks due to the change of colour and the past memory of the character. It separates the video in a positive way, and its one of the reasons why our video is so successful as we listened to our feedback. Some feedback we listened to, but Sammi and I together thought that the way it was would look effective when the product was finished. I'd say some of the still camera shots let us down due to a slight wobble. Another feedback after the audience had seen the final product was that the camera shot in the car, which is speeded up is repeated. 
And if we were to do this video again Sammi and I would of planned a better way of using a different effective way to connect the two settings used. Through the researching and planning of this project, Sammi and I have realised how much depth that you need to go into just to appeal to your chosen audience. The feedback has made us more confident with our final outcomes due to our audience, who are a very important aspect in media productions.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The construction of the media product was heavily dependant on the use of new media technologies. Sammi and I used new media technologies for almost every aspect of the development, planning, research and evaluation stages. Most importantly we used the technology of the use of Blogger, which is where all our coursework is shown and updated. It was rather easy due to the editing stages and then being able to write about it straight away on our blogs. By typing all our work on this blog it was easier to see and relate the work together. By posting our updates on the blog, our planning and researching was shown for other pupils to see and we could help each other out. 
For the editing of our music video, we used Adobe Premiere Pro. It was difficult it use at first but got used to it soon after. The tools were rather easy to use due to the pictures shown on each button. As we used Luke singing the words of the song, we had to make sure the lip sync was perfect to fit with the song. We tried to apply the breathing of Steph in the woods, this was unsuccesful because the song was too loud for the audience to hear it. We also changed the colour of the video, when the flashbacks of Stephanie appeared. Making it a different colour made it look effective and clear to the audience that it was in the past. When uploading our whole footage of clips on the programme, we obviously had to arrange the clips in order as we wanted them. 
We then used Photoshop to make our digipak and magazine advert. We were able to choice an certain text that would relate to the image we tried to create. We could edit the photo's we took to fit in with our advert. We could change the colours of the image and blur the photo to make it look effective. As we used this programme in year 12, Sammi and I were already familiar with it and we knew how to use it.
We obviously used a high quality camera to capture our image for our digipak and magazine advert. Again we were aware of how to use this technology. We then uploaded this photos onto the apple mac in our school editing room.
I learnt many new skills from this project, especially in the editing process for the video. I enjoyed using it but from time to time, i had to attempt certain things to see what would work well in our video.
Overall i was pleased with our final products. The skills i learnt i could easily use in the future. As we could see the whole groups blog's, it helped by seeing and improving what I had already done.
