Syria blog

 The blog that I have been looking at is about the Children of Syria and discusses its various contributors. The blog is a more professional version of a citizen blog.

Gaunlett's media theories

David Gauntlett postulated that web 2.0 symbolised an allotment where as web 1.0 were separate gardens. This suggests an idea of an internet that is shared between everyone, something 1.0 did not.  The idea of the gardens is a good metaphor for the differences between the two webs and signifies a massive development over the years.
Another main difference is with web 1.0, people planned there life around the media schedule to catch something on TV. This made the people creating the media and planning it almost like "media god." this idea was thought of by David Gauntlett. He also pointed out media corporations structures which had the ora of a cathedral. This reinforced the idea of "media gods." With web 2.0 that has all changed. It has allowed the "little people," to become prosumers and people are no longer bound and controlled by the schedules due to recording facilites and online catch up web sites.

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

For our music video we chose an unsigned band called Silent Sundays and we used their song "Never Mind." The genre is a rock genre, we identified out target audience relatively quickly. The target audience will probably be male from the ages of 16-24 and the type of person who would wear t-shirts supporting the band. The colloquial name for a similar audience would be "Goths," or "Metal heads." The target audience would most probably be Caucasian many due to the western music circuit. We used many types of media to gather audience feedback and some of them are evaluated below.

We asked several of our target audience  and people who would not like the type of music to watch our music video and list some words related to it. We used the most relevent and reoccurring words to create a wordle to express what our audience thought the themes of our music video were. The wordle is attached to this note. What we have learnt is that the main themes of our music video; destruction, anger etc have been identified. The music video has been perceived as quite dark and almost depressing which is what we were aiming for. We were trying to create a feeling of the lead singers downfall and his decent into a troubled life. Another element of the music video that we wanted to show was his efforts in trying to rebuild his life. We were concerned that we had not shown it well enough and to some extent this concern was justified. Not many of the viewers understood how he was trying and failing to rebuild his life. However, there were a few how did understand which was a positive for us.

We uploaded the music video to YouTube to get the publics opinion and feedback. The video has been up since early January and it has been a month since I first uploaded it. We have had 182 views, 2 likes, but unfortunately no comments. It is hard to extract any feedback from this, but all we can assume is that the audience has seen the tile for the video (a band shot) and only our target audience has watched it. We in turn received good feedback as we hit our target audience from our 2 likes and no dislikes. We will be able to expand our feedback as we get more reviews and comments, but this is all i can extract at this moment. It looks as though our audience liked the video at this moment.

For this evaluation task, we created a video of us asking some class mates about what they thought of our video and various other questions. Above is the video of this conversation. The feedback was all in all good with constructive criticism. They suggested that they felt the music video portrayed the genre very well through the use of performance and many band shots. They also notes how well the performance was undertaken and how it looked very much like a real band. We were very please to hear that we hit our target in making people want to hear more of the band. There was a general feeling that they would like to see how the music and the music videos differed from the Silent Sundays song "Never Mind."

A big part of our project was trying to nail our target audience and by the sounds of it we got it right as our target audience would be someone who listens to rock or metal. The person who listens to this might be labeled as a Goth or a Metal head, suggesting they would be wearing dark coloured clothing, supporting the band with t-shirts, posters and other ancillary products. The narrative however, was maybe a weak point. When quizzed on it we discovered that they did not understand the story line fully and was a little confusing especially the garbage structure. Only after the video did they realise that it was a metaphor for his life. Although, they did suggest that it associated with the genre with the use of violence, anger and destruction. They did understand the small story lines within, such as the break up with his girl friend and the use of narcotics and alcohol. They did agree that the performance was the biggest selling point and that a tour or live show would be a big thing for our band. There was a suggestion that they would prefer to see the band live than the music video.

One thing we were working on throughout our music video was that we used the right conventions and semiotics associated with our genre. They suggested that the use of alcohol and the needle was very effective in explaining what the character was going though and that the editing matched it well, although they hadn't seen it at the time the video was shot. When asked how we could improve it there was a split opinion as some people thought it was too much and some people thought it was an effective piece of film. There reasoning was that it was a bit over the top which is what we were aiming for. One thing we defiantly needed to improve was the narrative and we could have explained how the main character was trying to get his life back together. We showed this using the structure, but the suggested it was not clear enough. A major way we could have improved it is if we used a couple of shots of him trying to get a job or trying to get his girl friend back.

Overall when asked how successful they thought it was they praised the editing and camera work suggesting that our technical abilities and ideas were very good. They praised the amount of different camera shots and how we used they to create a different feeling in the video. They also liked the scenery and setting that it was shot in as we paid particular attention to that and making sure it was right. We wanted to keep the idea of construction and destruction and we did well with that. They did praise the narrative as they liked it and what it contained, even if they didn't understand the storyline fully. The one criticism that was raised was the effect at the end of the music video were the band faded from black and white to color. They liked it, but didn't understand the meaning. This was due to us not explaining how the character got his life back together as the effect related to hope coming back into his life. 

To conclude, i believe that the feedback we have got, from all forms of media, is overall quite positive. There are relevant beliefs that it could be improved in some places  and it is maybe lacking something, for example, we could have made it more obvious that the main character was trying to rebuild his life. The types of media were very useful, especially the pier review video. It helped us a lot and enabled us to ask direct questions and evaluate responses. The other types of media gave us different, but still very useful feedback. The YouTube video gave us an idea of what the public though, although it was quite brief. This was in some ways better than the pier review as it enabled all ages and types of people to view it. However the pier review gave us a lot more information to work with and was a lot more specific. The wordle was also very good. It gave us a quick visual representation of what the target audience thought of our video and we were able to evaluate it quite effectivly.

In conclusion I believe that our audience feedback showed that our music video, considering all aspects, was quite successful. There were things that we could have done better and ways we could improve it, which we took on board; this is evident from the peer feedback video. The other types of feedback were maybe not as useful, but gave us a useful perspective. One example was the music video on YouTube; this was uploaded with a fair amount of time, bnut we did not get that much feedback on the video. This is due to the fact that a small not very well known channel will not get many views at all. We only got to likes and around 180 views, this did not give us much feedback, but showed a general positive trend.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

This is a podcast of me discussing some screenshots of my music video