Evaluation 4

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

Story Board Screen Grab

Before we began to create our music video we had to plan and research what we were going to do. The first form of planning was creating our animatic where we drew pictures onto story boards, planned timings and wrote a description of the scene. However this did not really use media technologies; we therefore took pictures of our animatic and placed it into final cut along with our backing track. This enabled us to get a clearer idea of what our video would look like. Other forms of planning were extensive research into you tube video to look at conventions of indie music videos. To show our planning we used online programmes such as prezi and go-animate as presentation devices for our research and planning. We used a Apple Mac computer to complete most of our media coursework, this was extremely helpful in research and planning as we could use a tool called screen grab that meant we could take snap shots of what we were researching into. During the final stages of our media coursework Voke was mainly responsible for researching into album covers and magazine adverts, this speeded up the process of all tasks as each group member had a main responsibility but did contribute to all aspects of the coursework. Using the internet allowed us to look at different magazine adverts and cover albums which meant we could identify the conventions used and incorporate them into our own media platforms to make it more realistic.

This is Prezi, an online mind map programme thats allows you to plan and research in a creative way. I used this to create a mindmap of ideas, give a breif on the story line and show similar indie videos. I believe this was a really creative way of presenting our ideas rather than a convention hand drawn mind map. I used this in the research and planning stages of my media coursework.

To create our media products we had to use a number of technologies. Some of the programmes we used were final cut pro and photoshop that were crucial for editing our video and delveloping our digipak. Myself and emily were the main ones to edit our music video purely because we had had the most experience on final cut when we edited our animatic. Below is a short video I created on the programme 'jing' on to show how the music video was edited. I only captured a short section of our video being edited however it shows a number of different techiques that we used. Firstly I had to import our video files and audio into Final Cut. Once imported all files went into one space where we could access them easily. To place the audio into the video I dragged it into the time line of Final Cut, I then locked this so that the audio did not move when we placed other videos into Final Cut. For the first scene of our video we had to place a warning of flashing lights which I placed into the video similarly to the audio but on a different level. As shown I began to put the rest of the images into the video. We only needed a small section of some of the film and so to cut it down I dragged it into the end screen where you can set the in and our points. I then dragged this into the timeline. This was a really efficent and quick way of cutting the scenes to what was needed. I then did the same techique to produce the next section of the music video. Once two clips were placed into the time line I added in a cross dissolve which can be found in the effects tab; this made both images flow together nicely. In our music video we used a number of overlays and so next I demonstrated how to create an overlay. Firstly we found the section of film we wanted to use again by using the in and out points. Next I dragged it into the time line on a different layer. At the bottom of the screen there is a button that has a black line on it; this is used to create an overlay. We clicked this button where it allowed me to change the opacity of each image. I adjusted both images opacity so that they both could be seen at the same time. I then played with this so that the overlay could be seen. Although this is only a small section of the music video we demonstrated all the techiques we used to create our final music video.

Please click to access video

The music video was not the only part of our media coursework; we also had to create a digipak. From screen grabs in other posts on construction of our digipak you could see the progress of our ancillary task however you could not see exactly how we created it. Sophie was mainly responsible for creating the digipak however the rest of the group did help in the creation of this for example myself and Emily created the magazine advert and the darker digipak to speed up the process of getting this done. Here Sophie made a similar video on the construction of our digipak in which Photoshop was used. Firstly she demonstrates how we constructed the inside page of our album. We already had the images in place which we did by screen grabbing our video and changing the brightness of the images. These pictures were placed one ontop of the other to create three images in a line. The colour pick tool was used to pick a colour out of Jakes hair for the background colour. In the video Sophie demonstrates how we created the paint splat effect. This was actually a font we found on 'Dafont', the size of the font was increased and rotated to fit across the page. Next was the back page where again screen grabbed images were already in place from our video and transformed it to fit the page. Sophie shows how we changed the contrast and exposures of the image to create a professional photo and also touched it up using the spot healing tool. Next was the front page where  the same effects were used to make the image look more professional. We then added the text onto the album cover using the font 'code bold'. Jing could only hold 5 minutes worth of footage and it takes a lot longer than this to edit a whole digipak. After this we used a gradient tool and coloured it black to create a strip down the side which can be found on all CD's.

Please click to access video


For the creation of the magazine advert the programme Photoshop was also used. When looking at magazine adverts I tried to look at the conventions of real media products to make our magazine advert look professional and realistic. In order to keep a link between all three platforms I decided to take screen grabs from our music video chorus. I took each image and transformed it so that it decreased in size. I then placed each image next to each other to create our final magazine advert. I did this for about half a page and coloured the other half in black using the paint bucket tool and ensuring the pictured layers when on top so they would show up. Using the text we had already found I placed this where the pictures and the black background met and added other features such as rating, reviews, promotional text and business icons.


Throughout my media coursework I have had to use a number of media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages of my coursework.

To make our music video we first needed access to a camera, storage space and a tripod. At first we were going to use camera provided by the school, however because we were filming at night time we were told they did not pick up images very well in the dark. We managed to get hold of a Canon HD e03od camera which required us to use SD memory cards. We found when filming memory was used up very quickly and when we went back to edit our film in final cut we had to render everything when we moved anything. Obviously this was very time consuming and once we finished our rough cut the feedback we got was to change the story line. After planning another story line we decided this time to use the schools video camera instead as we were filming in day light now. This much more easier as we had a tape provided which allowed us to film a large amount of footage all on one tape. As well as this we found that when placed into final cut we did not need to render it every time and so editing our final cut was much much quicker! Due to the fact it was much quicker we could spend much more time on finer details such as the image quality, adding over lays and different transitions. With the video camera we used a tripod to capture still images and create a professional video. We also used my iPhone which had a strobe light app on it in which we used to create our chorus. To edit and complete most of our coursework we used Apple Macs, the big high grafic screen allowed us to add intricate detail to our music video and our digipak.

Programmes we used: Final Cut, Photoshop and MPEG streamclip

Final Cut Screen Grab

We used final cut to create our animatic, rough cut and final music video. From the video above and the screen grab below you can get an idea of how we edited our music video. It took a while to get used to the controls in this programme but once we got the hang of things it was easy to use and we could produce some great effects. Using youtube enabled us to research into how to create effects and extend our knowledge on final cut.

Layers

Photoshop was used in creating our ancillary task, we produced two digipaks on this programme including our magazine advert and two cover albums. Again watching the video of Jing above, you get an idea of how we created some of the elements of our digipak. We also created our magazine advert which is not shown in the video. We did this by screen grabbing our chorus and placing all the images next to each other creating the effect you can see in our final peice.

MPEG streamclip was a programme we used to export of media videos from final cut. First we had to export it as a quick time movie. Once this was done we then had to drag the file into MPEG streamclip where we saved it as an MP4 file which allowed us to upload onto blogger. 

Blogger is used to upload all of our media coursework. All our research pictures and final peices went on here in individual posts. I felt this was a creative way of presenting coursework that allowed us to use many media technologies.

Websites used for research: Google, Wikipedia, music websites (MTV, NME) and You Tube.

All the above websites were useful for providing important information about our genre of music and helped with some of the elements you see in our media coursework today.

you tube research

google research

 

Wiki research

 

For presenting photos I mainly used the website called Picasion, this allowed me to place a number of images in one space. I felt that this was a much better way of presenting images rather than one after another in a post. It also meant that I could write about the images underneath all in one go.

This is slide share, it allowed me to create a word document and place in on my blog. I found this gave a slightly different effect to normal posts and allowed me to add pictures much more easily with different borders. I used this in the research and planning stages of my media coursework.

This is Bubbl.us  it is an online mind map programme. I used this to create a mind map of my Indie target audience. I found this useful as it gave me an insight into the genre in which we had chosen. 

This is Go Animate, it is an online programme that allows you to create your own cartoon. I used this to respresent my target audience. I got the two charaters to say things about the indie genre. I felt this was a good way of representing the indie genre as it was different than just reading what they did. The only problem with this programme as the character choices and scenes were limited and so I picked the ones I felt were most appropriate for the indie genre. I used this in researching the target audience and also in my evaluation question 3.

This is a html code I used to chang the way I presented my text in evaluation question 2. I thought it was make a change to the conventional text in a blog and felt it was a nice way of presenting text. I have also used scroll bars in other posts for example presenting the lyrics of our chosen song. It allows you to put a large amount of text in a small space. I also used HTML coding when we were discussing song choices. I made a drop down list of the potential songs where you can click on each song and it will take you to the music video. I felt this was a very technical way of showing our music video choices.

  

Here is a screen grab of a video I made for evaluation question 1. I made this video in final cut and really felt it presented my technical ability in this programme. I first researched songs that I felt closely respresented some of the scenes seen in our music video; this song was Ellie Gouldings 'lights'. I placed this into final cut and set in and our points of the section I wanted to use. I then decreased the volume of the song and did a voice over, where I spoke about the lighting in the music video. To compare it to our own video I took a section from our chorus (where strobe lighting was used) and again did a voice over comparing it to our own music video. I found that this was a really creative way of presenting an evaluation question. I also used the same technique for the camera angles and lip syncin in evaluation question 1 however I did not use a voice over and added text instead.

In evaluation question 3 (audience feedback) I used a number of media technologies to represent it. Firstly we placed our music video on Facebook where we recieved feedback via a social networking site showing the use of internet here. We also recieved written feedback which I placed onto an online programme called Wall Wisher. As you can see this programme allowed me to create a wall affect where I typed up all the written feedback we recieved making it easily readable. We also decided to capture verbal feedback and made a video of this. We recoreded five people on my iphone and asked them questions on our music video. I made this in the same way as the other videos in final cut were we also added our song as background noise and overlays when our respondents gave examples. As a group we felt this was a really good way of presenting our feedback and was something we could all work together on as a group.

For all my other digipak posts I just wrote about them and posted pictures so for the album construction I decided to create a powerpoint which I uploaded on authorSTREAM. I could place pictues on here and write text next to it, it really made it easy to compare our two digipaks with real media platforms on this type of presentational device.

To introduce my first evaluation question I used Voki, which is allows you to create an animated person who speaks. I created a paragraph and typed it into the programme. It was a nice introduction and example of the many media technologies to come in my evaluation questions.

What would we do if we did not have access to the equipment we used? 

It would be extremely difficult to create a music video without the help of media technologies. Without the camera we could not capture the footage we needed to and with out the computer we could not have uploaded it or researched into music videos to the extent that we have done. As well as this we would not have been able to have used programmes such as Final cut and Photoshop to edit our video and create our ancillary task. Therefore it would have been impossible for us to create the music video that we have made without access to the equipment we used. 

Evaluation 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
After creating our media pieces we needed to receive some audience feedback; we did this in a number of ways. Firstly we placed our music video on facebook where people placed comments on what they thought of the video. Below is an image of the feedback we recieved from facebook.

As you can see the general comments where that the liked the use of strobe lighting at the chorus, the story line fitted with our genre and the effects used in the video worked really well. It was really nice to see such positive feedback after working very hard to complete our video.

After placing our video on Facebook we decided we needed to receive more feedback as more than ten people would see this video if it was placed on a music channel. Our whole media class decided to come together and watch each others videos. Each individual had a sheet of paper where they wrote down what they liked and disliked about each video. This was extremely helpful and we ended up getting around 20 pieces of feedback. Some of the comments included were...

We also made a video demonstrating our audience feedback, we asked five people what they thought about our video and asked them questions to answer.

From our feedback we have learnt that some improvements could be made in our music video. Firstly the majority of our feedback audiences agreed that our chorus scene went on for longer than needed and got a bit repetitive towards the end. They also agreed that some of the lighting was quite bleached which made visibility of lip syncing sometimes difficult. If we had the opportunity to create our music video again we would take the lighting into consideration and ensure that it was not as bleached out as it was in some parts of our music video. Due to the fact we had to make a second story board in a short amount of time we did not have time to plan a whole new chorus, in the future we would change this to create a variety of scenes in order to satisfy the consumer feedback that we received. We did find however that the majority of our audience preferred our final music video to our rough cut which means we did take on the first lot of our audience feedback and made improvements on it. Its always important to receive feedback from work you have done to see peoples reaction. This is especially important for music videos as because it goes on television it has a wide audience base. Feedback will allow you to make changes in order to satisfy your audiences; which will intern learn to record sales.

Evaluation 2

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

For our media coursework we had to make a music video and complete and ancillary task which involved the creation of album artwork and a magazine advert. Conventions across all the media platforms (music video, magazine advert and album artwork) will contain similar images, colour schemes, fonts and mise en scene (eg. clothing) to create an easily identifiable brand. An identifiable brand is important when promoting effectively. The brand needs to be recognizable for audiences so they can link the platforms together. Researching into these conventions allowed us to collaborate the same techniques into our media platforms. The genre of music that we decided on was Indie, so the first thing we did was to find songs of the indie genre. After numerous you tube videos and feedback from songs we decided on 'Flux' by Bloc Party. This band belong to the indie genre and so this was a helpful starting point in creating our media platforms.

Here is a short animated video about our target audience as previously shown in older posts.

Here I have layed out one of our ancillary tasks to show the connections between the three media platforms. As you can see there is a coherent house style throughout using the same colour schemes, fonts and images which are illustrated on all three platforms. We have taken screen grabs from our chorus and made them smaller for our poster. Using the same image we placed this onto our album as the front cover. This immediately created a link between the three platforms as we took the image from our video, placed it onto the advert and also as the front cover of the album. This would make all three platforms easily recognizable to our audiences. For our album work all panels included the dark colour scheme and the font 'code light' and 'code bold' this again created the same mode of address for our audience. Not only is this used throughout our media platforms but the same font is used on every Bloc Party album and so we tried to get a font that matched as closely as possible to keep our album realistic.On our poster we added a banner in order to promote the album.

This is our other digipak that we created first of all. The links between this digipak are not as strong as the one above mainly because of the differences between the magazine advert and album artwork. The images seen on our album are taken from our music video and is the first visual that the audience will see when watching it. We thought it would be a good idea to place eyes open on the front of the album and eyes closed on the back of the album in order to amplify the image and create structure. The inside of the album is created in a similar way, we have the same CD design but in a lighter colour and also the three images for the inside page have also been used to create the same house style. For the magazine advert in order to link the platforms together we added an image of this album so that audiences would link to two together. Artists such as Rhianna have done this to promote there album and we think it is an effective way of advertising the album and promoting the artist.

I believe that our ancillary task links in extremely well with our music platform. The use of similar colours and pictures means that the media platforms can be easily identified together. This is important when selling CD's as audiences know which promotional tools link with which product. We created two digipak's and even though there were two different colour schemes we still did link all the platforms together for example with the advert we placed an image of the CD cover on it so that audiences would recognize what the CD looked like.

Here is a questionnaire we conducted that asked nine people if they thought our three media products all linked together. As you can see the majority of the people we asked (6) said that it did link together and the other three said 'kind of'. This was positive feedback as no one disagreed that it did not. 





What would we change?
If given the chance to create the media platforms again we would change a number of things...
The video - For our music video we would have planned much more in advance; none of us had filmed or edited before and it was very time consuming. If we did not plan what we were doing we could miss bits out meaning we had to go out and re film again, time that could of been used to edit our video. If filming again I would plan our story line better as although it fit into the song we changed it from our orignal story board and so this one was not in as much depth. When going out to film I would plan what needed to be filmed in detail so that we did not waste time and we got all the footage that we needed. The colouring of the video was quite bleached; even though we changed it slightly in photoshop we would look to be more aware of lighting in the future.

The poster - I really like what we did with the poster and so I would not change much about it. If i could change anything I would have changed some of the smaller pictures we used as some were quite close up and stood out more than others. I really liked how it was layed out and had a real indie feel to it. Although we had two albums we did make the poster apply to both album covers.
The album artwork - We were quite limited on what images we could use for this as we wanted to take images from our video in order for the platforms to all link together, however there were not many shots of Jake on his own. If we could change this then we would take more pictures of Jake in the locations we had filmed in. This way we would have a nice image and also would have the location in the background so it was recognisable to the audience. Making two albums was time consuming and so if we did this again we could focus more on one album.

Evaluation 1

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

Editing - Editing in an indie video is often fast paced, with a large number of shots in a short time. Often a fade in and out is used to start and finish the video. In our music video we have a variety of shots and our editing matches the fast tempo of the song. Some editing is faster than other in our video due to the different level of tempo's found within the song. This can be seen when there are single shots of Emily and Jake and the pace of editing is increased as the tempo speeds up.
Lighting - Often disco or stage lighting is used in Indie videos along with low key lighting. Some of our video has quite ambient lighting however this was due to the lighting at the time of filming. The camera we were using did not pick up images well in the dark and so in order to have clear lip syncing we needed to film during the day. We were able to use strobe lighting for our chorus which matched the beat of the song very well.
Camera -Usually band members will look into the camera in order to identify the individiual or lead vocalist. The majority of shots used are usually on steadicam or handheld. Our artist (Jake) is filmed in every scene with a number of extreme close ups, medium shots and long shots. This enables the audience to clearly identify and recognise the artist. Using medium shots enabled us to lip sync whilst also showing the body language of our character. All are footage was filmed on a tripod to enable steady and professional shots.

It is important that we look back at Andrew Goodwin's 'dancing in the distraction factory'. He mentions several important things that are vital for a music video to be successful.

1) Music videos will demonstrate genre characteristics - for example indie videos often show the artist or band as a performance and narrative which is what we have done in our music video.

2) Relationship between the visuals and the lyrics and the music and visuals -These either illustrate, amplify or condradic each other. In our music video we have used overlays to amplify and illustrate our lyrics for example 'if your right hand is causing you pain cut it off' we have included an overlay of him cutting his arm.

3) Record labels will demand lots of close ups of the artist - This helps to promote the artist and make them easily identifiable by audiences. In our music video we have used a variety of camera shots in order to create this.

Demonstrate the iconography and genre characteristic within the genre

shot 1)

In our music video we decided to introduce the use of overlays to show our techincal ability when editing. We researched a variety of music videos such as Pixie Lott 'all about tonight' who uses a variety of overlays in her music video to portray 'going out' which is part of the lyrics from this video. The use of overlays enables the audience to see two images at once which often helps to set the scene for a music video. In our video we used over lays to illustrate and amplify the lyrics, this meant that the audience visuals were enhanced and the lyrics matched what they were seeing.

Shot 2)

The use of extreme close ups helps to identify characters and shows all features. This makes them easily identifiable and distinguishes who is the main artist in the video. Extreme close ups also enable the artist to portray emotion through features such as the eyes, it creates a connection with the audience who can sense the emotion being created through the song. Many music video will feature at some stage close up camera shots of the main artist. As Andrew Goodwin stated 'every record company demands for lots of close ups' this allows the artist to be promoted and will help to generate record sales. An example of this can be shown in The Killers video 'Mr Brightside' where they use a number of close up shots of the main artist.

shot 3)

Strobe lighting is often use in Indie music videos to portay party scenes. Bloc party have often used strobe lighting when performing the song 'Flux' on stage live. To show the iconography and conventions of an Indie music video we decided to use strobe lighting for our chorus as it was up beat and we needed lighting to match the fast tempo of the song.

shot 4)

The use of two people in our music video helps to set the scene of 'boyfriend and girlfriend' a two person shot can help to show the emotion between two people and make it clear for the audience what is going on. This is apparenrt in most music videos to help create the narrative. In Example's video 'Kickstarts' a similar story line is portrayed showing the same camera angle as we did in order to fit both characters into the shot. This is a key convention of music videos that invole a boyfriend girlfriend scenario.

shot 5&6)

Lip syncing is a key convention of music videos. It helps to create a link between the artist and the audience. When lip syncing is in time it creates realism for the audience who are watching anfd they are able to identify the artist in the video. In almost every music video you see it will include lip syncing as it helps to promote the song. As well as this I have also chosen angles as a shot from our music video. At the beginning of the song we used a number of shots and edited them to fit the beat of the song. This can also been seen in depicts video 'doubt'.

shot 7)

The split screen enables you to show two different shots at once in different places. We used a split screen of Emily and Jake when they say 'we need to talk' almost as if they are saying it to each other but are in different places creating a sense of spatial awareness. Using a split screen helped to illustarate the skills we had learnt in final cut whilst editing our music video. I have used a similar image from Examples video 'kickstarts' which shows the use of a split screen. It shows a similar image but two different people just like we used in our music video.

shot 9)

The type of clothing worn in a music video is important in respresenting the genre of the band and also for creating a brand image that audiences can copy. For example Lady Gaga uses extreme clothing designs in all of her videos and also wears this type of clothing to big events, her fans can immedialtey recognise lady gaga just from her clothing. It is typical of the indie genre to wear skinny jeans and hooded tops, we used this mis-en-scene to emphazise our indie genre. As Andrew Goodwin says that music videos must "demonstate the iconography and genre characteristics within the genre" which is where the mis-en-scene of clothing fits in.

shot 9)

In every music video shown on television, a logo of that channel and name of the band and song is shown somewhere on the screen. It is important for audiences to identify the channel they are watching as it will distinguish the type of music that is being played for exameple 'scuzz' plays rock music and 'the box' plays up to date pop songs. For our music video we used MTV Music, research found that MTV Music had various information on Bloc Party and included them under artists name showing that they do play Bloc Party on their music channel. It is important to fit the song with the right channel to attract the right target audience, people watching certain channels will be interested in a certain type of genre and so are likely to like the songs if they are matched to the correct channel. The band name and song is a generic convention used by all music videos to allow the audience watching to know who sings it and what the song is called, this enables them to go and download the song on sites such as Itunes.

ancillary task

As well as using the conventions of ratings on a magazine advert it is also apparent that all adverts include pictures of the artist; this enables the audience to identify who the band or individual is. Magazine adverts are often made in the style of the bands genre for example Plan B's style is quite old fashioned and the lead singers voice has a 60's feels to it. This is relfected in the magazine advert which is seen in black and white with an old style microphone. Smiliarly Noah and the Whales portay an indie genre in their magazine advert. The colouring of the advert is quite pale and they are pictured in a field with a SLR camera. SLR cameras are asosiated with the indie genre as it is a way of expressing themselves through pictures of scenery and people.

band name and album Audiences need to identify who the advert is promoted and so it is a key convetion to place the artist name and album onto the advert. Music adverts often have the same type face as they have used throughout their time of being an artist and it helps to create the same mode of address. It creates a recognisable brand for the artist which is important especially when CD's are on the shelves in stores with hundreds of other choices.

promoting the album

Promoting the ablum on the magazine advert is important because that is what the advert is there to do. Audiences need to be aware of the new album through adverting to boost sales. As seen above Rhianna's magazine advert features a picture of her album with a banner promoting it. Similarly on our magazine advert we also took this convention and added a dark banner with the a picture of our album to match the colour scheme of our advert.

CD

It is a convention of album covers to include an image of the artist or band and also the band and album now. However for Bloc Party they often use location shots however due to the change of our filming location we could not use our location image as it would not have made sense. The point of the album and band name is in order for audiences to identify whos album is it. The image of the artist is also used which can help people identify the album much more easily; especially if it is mixed amongst other albums. We designed two album covers as we were unsure of which one fitted in with our other media platforms, our second album cover is similar to that our examples 'wont go quietly'.