Evaluation Question 4: How you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Research and Planning

The first media technology I used was Youtube. As I wanted my music video to look as good as possible I needed to start researching what other band orientated videos looked like. The best way I thought I would do this is by going on Youtube and looking at some bands in the charts at the moment and seeing what things they put in their videos. Here is a videos that I found;



Another media technology I used was google images. I needed to research more into what different costumes and outfits I was going to use in the video but especially the band scene. Looking on google images I could see the different clothes that I could possibly use and what colours would look better etc.

Another media technology I used was email. This was, for us, our first point of contact with the band. But also at various points during the project I have been in contact with the band, whether it was at the start of the project asking for permission to use the song or just emailing them to update them on our progress. They even helped us during the planning saying if we had any trouble coming up with ideas we could ask them. The use of this technology was essential, as the band is from the USA, without being able to email we wouldn't of been able to contact them at all. We got the email address from the next media technology that I am going to talk about. Here is an example of an email I sent to the band;



We got the email address and the music from unsigned.com. Unsigned is a website that includes a huge range of music that isn't copyrighted. You are free to browse and listen to the music as much as you want. We knew we wanted an indie song which was pretty fast paced so we looked through that area on the site which is very easy to navigate through. Once we found the song and had chosen it we went onto The Big Hurt's (The Bands) profile. This gave us  links to their email address, and is how we contacted them.


Contruction

During construction of the project we used a range of different media technologies. Firstly we used a HD video camera to film the entire project and for taking pictures we used digital cameras. This was better because last year we only had a normal video camera but this year were had been upgraded to a HD one, which obvioulsy made our quality much better. The digital camera was mainly used to get images for our digipak and show us working on our video.

The iMac was the most used piece of technology for me, on it we used Final Cut Expressed to edit the whole of the video. Although we did use final cut last year, this year was much more advanced because we had to use a whole bunch of more layers and and roughly about 3 times as much footage to use from compared to last year.

For the ancillary tasks, mainly just the digipak and the magazine advert the piece of software I used was Photoshop. This software allowed me to be very creative with the pictures we took but at the same time made it look professional which was great! This is a very useful piece of technology if you know how to sue it, sadly I wasn't 100% sure of how to use it so what I was forced to do was ask my peers and look on the internet for walkthroughs etc. For example a technique I used was the blurring tool. Although this sounds simplisitically simple, it is in fact not. There are numerous things you have to do ranging from cutting around the part of the main picture you want blurred, then selecting the blur tool and how much on a scale you want it blurred.

Evaluation

For our evaluation I had to use blogger to post all of the questions. I also had to use blogger to do all of my research and planning aswell. Anopther piece of technology I used for my evaluation was survey monkey, which was crucial in completing audience feedback. For survey monkey I had to write down loads of questions and people had to answer them, the questions were things like 'Did you enjoy our video?' and ways in which we could have improved the video etc.

Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter also helped me with my evaluation because I could tell people to go on my profile and complete my survey or watch my video and give me some feedback on it.

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After making the video I thought it would be extremely important to attain some feedback from some of the audience and viewers of our masterpiece. This was to find out whether we have successfully completed our music video and if people would enjoy it in general. To do this we needed to locate our audience and find out some things they liked/disliked about it and their overall opinion.

To receive feedback on our music video we approached the system in a way that would help us get alot of results in quick succession. We browsed websites and places that we could issue our music video on in the hope of attracting an audience to complete our questionnaire and give us feedback. Knowing that alot of users use the websites facebook , we decided on advertising our video on this. Furthermore, we decided on placing the links to Surveymonkey.com and Youtube.com in order to attract a wider audience and for fellow media students to take the questionnaire and provide us with feedback on what could be improved and whether they liked the video or not. Below are all of the audience feedback techniques we used.

Survey

By creating a survey, it allowed me to see what people thought of my video which is important as we learn what the audience liked and disliked. We created roughly 5 or 6 questions that people were able to answer, this ranged from yes/no questions to essay boxes in which the audience could put however many thoughts/opinions that they desired. This information is helpful because, if we had the opportunity to do the video again or create another video we can use the feedback we received and interpret it in our next video. However we didn't get many responses to our survey, this was because there was a lack of promotion for the video and we only really showed it to our friends. Here are some of the questions we did for our survey:

 Focus Group

Focus Groups are arguably the best way to gather information, this is because we got together about 10 different people to sit around and discuss our video. We asked them questions similar to our survey but asked them to ellaborate on their answers some more so we could get a clearer view of what they were actually saying and avoided confusion like there could have been on a survey or any other feedback source.

During the focus group we asked questions like "What did you like about the video?", "What was your favourite part of the video?","If you could, what would you change?". These key questions alone sparked up a few big conversation between the different members of the group - with people agreeing and disagreeing with each other it meant we could get a clear view of what people were saying and allowed us to hear the reasoning behind peoples opinions.

Another thing we asked our focus group to do was to go onto 'wallwisher' and write a comment about our video - both a good and bad thing. Although we asked all 10 people to do it only 6 people ended up actually doing it which was disappointing but looking back 6 would be enough for us.

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I feel the combination between our final video and our digipak/magazine advert is very good because the song on the whole the video and the ancillarys are very similar and complioment each other.

This part of the coursework entailed a magazine advert and a digipak to go along with the actual video, this was to make out as if the product was to go on sale for real. As you can see below through our products we have kept them all fairly similar to each other to make sure there was continuity between it all. Below will explain everything in more detail.

The song Low Down Ho by The Big Hurt portrays a very clear message as to the story it is telling and what the song is about as a whole. We get the sense of it being about a love/hate relationship between a couple who are capable of getting along but is not always the case as the girl is a bit evil and not very nice to the boy "she took my CD's VCR, TV and remote control to the pawn store". As the couple acted out in the our video are in fact a couple in real life we thought it would work very well because there would have been natural chemistry there so would have made the video more believable, this would have been the case in our ancillary's too, and it shows because we had took some fantastic shots which look natural.

Characters Positioning

There are several things in all 3 of our ancillary tasks that show that they are all interlinked together and combine with each other in a magical way. For example one of the tabs on our digipak is of the main characters standing next to eachother facing away from the camera, this mirrors that of the video because the last shot shows the same two characters walking away from the camera as if walking off into the future together (showing that after all their troubles they the male has decided to stick around), this reassures the viewer of all the ancillary's because they are so similar.

Background

The background for the digipak and magazine advert is a basic brick wall. Although it may seem simple and meaningless it is far from it. The brick wall background represents the new found strength that has been thrust upon the relationship of our two characters throughout the video. At the start of the song they were going through a rocky patch, but towards the end it has been immensely improved and has been referred to by the brick wall as they are durable structures.

Font

The font we have chosen for the digipak is a very modern choice which has been urbanised by the creators and we think it compliments the style of our whole project greatly as it is out of the ordinary and is very loud looking, which are the exact things we were aiming for in our video.

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

What are the key conventions for music videos?

Firstly here are a list of what I think are the key conventions for my genre of music videos;

• band scene
• storyline
• lip syncing
• editing to the beat
• artist name at the start and end
• music playing in the background

Conventions tend to be used in music videos to define its genre, as previousy explained in my blog, and the ones above are the ones that I think define my song that I have chosen. So for this reason within the video I have tried to incorprate all of them in.

Band Scene

As this is a very instrumental song we needed to have band elements in it to make the authenticity on point. I feel we did this very well because it looked as if we were genuinely playing the instruments and singing along to the song. Many music videos have band scenes within and I felt it was a necessity to include it in ours, mainly to make it look as professional as possible.

Here is a comparison I made with the Kings of Leon video for "Use Somebody"

Lip Syncing

Lip Syncing is almost always included in every music video, with the exception of a few. This meant that I felt I needed to include it, which we did. There are many ways in which we could have included it, for example most videos lip sync in the band scene or as they are acting out the story. I chose to do this both ways which was encouraged by our peers and teachers. Overall lip syncing helps emphasise the meaning of the lyrics and makes it more personal to the viewer as the actual emotions are being felt through the singer. Below I have made a comparison to Ed Sheerans video 'Lego House' because they are very similar in the way they are both on their own in public singing to the camera, also similar with what they are wearing.

Below is the full video if you would like to make a full comparison.




Storyline

Having a storyline in a music video is a very good thing to have because it gives the audience something to focus on and would give them a very good chance to understand what the lyrics mean (this is only if the story and lyrics correlate) and will also allow the audience to sing along to the song because they understand it better, which will make the audience enjoy it more. This is why we chose to do a storyline, which is also a very basic story of a rocky relationship which many people can relate to.

Challenging conventions?

In my opinion my media product does not challenge any conventions throughout and I have tried very hard to stick to them to make it as traditional as possible. However I have heard one or two people say that because one of the main characters in my video is female, this could be seen as against the flow of society because men are predominantly seen as being more powerful and in control of things,  for example David Cameron and Barack Obama. This is called the 'feminist theory' being initially applied by Laura Mulvey and suggests that the female character is in control of things, which of course goes against real life circumstances, although I do not fully agree with this and is only what I have been fed back by my class mates.

Digipak and Magazine Advert

Below and above are firstly my magazine advert and secondly my digipak. This has taken me a very long time to do and was very hard as it was all completed in Photoshop. I will be talking about how I used Photoshop in a later post which should be up by now so I won't bore you with the details again now.

Final Video:

After a very long, strenuous time making the whole thing we have finally finished it. Thankfully. Here it is, I hope you enjoy it.

Digipak Analysis - Gorillaz

This DigiPak is the packaging for a Gorillaz album (CD).

How Many Panels Does The Digipak Have?
This DigiPak has five panels (double sided). These panels appear to be
the same size as a regular CD case.
How Has It Been Designed?
When folded out, this DigiPak forms the shape of a cross. The centre square contains the CD, and the other four squares (flaps), have each of the band characters faces on them. From the photo of the DigiPak half folded up, it appears that the Characte
rs all have different expressions on their faces depending on which side of the flap you can see. I am guessing that the album cover, is likely to be on the opposite side of the square holding the disk. I say this, because it is the only flap that would be left over provided that all of the character flaps are double sided.
This is a really interesting idea, and I think that it is different, and an unusual desigh for a DigiPak… However the Gorillaz are not exactly the band known for sticking most to convention, as each band member hides behind the face of a cartoon version of themselves, rather than letting everyone become aware of who they all really are.
The background for all of this DigiPak is plain white. This makes the characters really stand out, and it also makes it look sharp and clean. The background for the disk also follows this and it connects each of the flaps so that it is generally a stronger
design.
Size?
The average size for a regular CD case is approximately:

120.5mm [Width] x 119.5mm[Height] … (per panel)
There are three of these panels plus the seams in between each folding flap.
Material?

Card – Outer covers
Card – Inner covers

Plastic – Tray for CD/DVDs

Magazine Advert Analysis

As part of our task we have to create a magazine advert, for this reason I am going to analyse a few famous artists adverts to see what they do and try to mimic the good parts.

Adverts tend to feature the product that they are trying to sell and the brand. For music adverts, the artist tends to be both the product and the band. Music adverts are used in magazines to sell CD's and digipaks. The main image used on a magazine advert is usually of the artist so that the person reading the magazine is instantly drawn to a face they recognise so they will want to read more and find out more. The advert will normally also include a release date so that the reader can find out when the CD is available to buy.

In this Gwen Stefani advert, we see a large image of Gwen which is an enlarged version of the image on the CD cover, the colour scheme that is used in this are quite faded but Gwen still stands out against the background of the image. The image is quite seductive, she is looking down the camera lens and this supports the image of the artist as this is the type of look she goes for, and it also makes it appealing to the male viewer.

The artists name is in big lettering, the same lettering that is used on the album cover and on her own clothing range, this will give fans of Gwen Stefani who recognise this a sense of shared knowledge. It also stands out against the faded colours of the background and the gold/yellow colour makes it seem 'royal'. This theme is kept in the advert by the fact that she is holding a crown and sitting on a thrown. The album title and information are in smaller lettering below, so you first recognise the artist and then go on to read about the release date and other important information.

There is a relationship between the texts and images shown on the advert in that it all keeps in with the theme of royalty. It shows that Gwen seems to be a 'queen' and this could suggest that they are trying to promote her as a the queen of music, which is appropriate as she has been a recording artist for many years.




The second advert I will be analysing is Noel Gallaghers High FLying Birds.

In the top right hand corner it features the band name, it is in a big and interesting font which is obviously used to immediately attract any wandering eyes coming across the advert. This means they ill immediately know who the band are etc. The main singer in High Flyin gBirds is Noel Gallagher, this is expressed through the advert because Noel Gallagher is right in the middle of it getting all of the attention. Also by what he is wearing it lets potential buyers/listeners know what type of music he does because he is dressed quite well dressed, but in his own casual way. For example although he is wearing a suit he has his top button undone and not wearing a tie at all. 


Just underneath where Noel Gallagher is there is writing. One line of it says "No. 1 album" then lists some of the songs that are on there. This is bragging about how good the album actually is with facts that the audience can be impressed by. Another thing is that right at the bottom there are reviews of the album which highlights for the potential buyer how good the album is rated by critics,  the ratings given are from highly respected newspapers, magazines and radio stations which lets the viewer be reassured that they are true/trusted reviews. 

Audience Theory: Uses and Gratification Model

This theory suggests that we use the text for our own satisfaction and needs. (Which is the complete opposite to the effects model) This means that the power lies wihtin the audience not the producers , so this theory emphasises what the audience do with the text. Overall the audience is free to reject, use or play with media meanings in whatever way they want.

Here is a list of things the audience could use media texts for;

• diversion
• escape
• information
• pleasure
• sexual stimulation

Audience Theory: The Effects Model

Today in lesson we are doing some exam work. We have been learning about the effects model and how it influences people. Here is what I have learnt.

• the consumption od media text has an effect or influence upon the audience
• it is normally considered that this effect is negative
• audiences are passive and powerless to prevent the influence
• the power lies within the message of the text
• it is a said the audience is "drugged, doped and addicted"

The key evidence for this is the so called "Bobo Doll Experiment". This was a controversial piece of research whjich apparently proved children copied violent behaviour. How it worked was the children were first shown a video of an adult attacking Bobo, then they were brought into a room with nice toys that they weren't alloowed to play with and after led into a room with Bobo, it showed that 88% of the children imitated the action. The conclusion to this was that children will imitate violence that they saw on TV.

However the flaws to this experiment was that firstly there was nothing else you could do with the doll, once you hit it Bobo immediately came back up, so the fun of the toy was that once you knocked it back it bounced back up for more.

On the whole the Effects Model is jsut a theory and it is not proved.

Audience Research: Reception Theory

This was developed by the academic Stuart Hall at Birmingham University in the 1970's and considered how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded by audiences. The 3 ways an audience could decode it were negotiated, oppositional and dominant.

Firstly dominant meaning is where the audience recognises the meaning and chooses to reject it for cultural, political or idealogical reasons.

Negotiated is where the audience accepts, rejects or refines elements of the text in light of previously held views. Basically neither agreeing or disagreeing or being disinterested.

The final way is Oppositional, this is where the audience recognises the meaning but chooses to completely ignore it or the audience doesn't fully understand the meaning the producer is trying to put across.

How to Increase Album Sales

The whole point of making an album is to sell it to get money. This means that we need to appeal to the biggest audience possible and broaden our ideas so a wider variety of people will want to buy the album. There are a few marketing strategies that we can use which will help us and the band out with sales.

Advertising ia the main thing we need to do because if people dont know its out there they are not going to buy it are they. This means that we will need to create an advert/poster which briefly lets people know about the band so they can know everything they need jsut witha quick glimpse whilst walking past.

What is a Digipak/what needs to go on it?

Digipak is a patented style of CD,  DVD or BD packaging. Digipaks typically consist of a gatefold (book-style) paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside. As part of our task we will need to produce a digipak so as we are going along we will be continuously thinking of ideas to go on the digipak.

Advanced Coursework Brief

Now that we have finished our video we now have to start thinking about our digipak and magazine advert. We are going to be making a promotion package for the release of the album, this will include a music promo video (which we have just completed), with a cover for tis release om DVD (digipak) and a magazine advertisement for the DVD.

Personally, I am very much looking forward to making the digipak, advert and poster because it will give us a chance to use our imagination and see if we can genuinely appeal to people.

Finished Video!

We have finally finished our video today, we are very proud of ourselves and think that it is one of the best! A video of it will be posted on here shortly so keep checking.

Filming 2

After completing the main part of our filming the other day, this has spurred us on to do more. Today we went out and filmed a whole load more which we can edit into our final video shortly. Todays filming mainly included lip syncning from the main character and a couple of random couple shots that we can put into the gaps we haven't filled yet.

Editing

Charlie and I spent the whole day editing today, which we dont regret because we have now completed 80% of the editing and only have a few little gaps to fill in. We have jsut realised that we may need to get a couple more shots though which isn't ideal but in the end it will be good because we wont have to repeat any shots to fill up the time. Overall the editing has went really well today.

Filming

Today me and Charlie went out to film a massive chunk of the film in London. As we were prepared with a detailed outline of everything we wanted to get filmed it was success and there is a lot to be editied next time we are in school which we are looking forward to.

Another Group Member Leaving

As I walked into school today my teacher told me that 'the word on the street' was that Georgie, our third group member had left the group and had tried to start on our own. Charlie and I were very shocked at this news as she is not the strongest media student and would definitely struggle in her own. However we are not phased by this and we are determined to prove to our teacher and the world that we were the brains of the group.

Key Music Video Conventions

There are many different traditional conventions for a music video. The obvious examples of this are;

• lip syncing
• editing to the beat
• artist/band in the video
• mini narrative

The example below is a very generic music video, as its mainly lip syncing, looking into the camera, with both artists singing (one of them playing an instrument)

Different types of music have slightly different key conventions, for example girl groups/artists tend to have a specific dance routine and stick to that throughout the video, also they tend to wear bikinis just to have an excuse to show off their bodies. Such as the example below...



Another genre that has more specific conventions is RnB/Hip Hop, this is because they tend to have lots of dancing girls, expensive cars, flash jewellery and sitting around a pool. An example of this would be David Guetta ft Akon - Sexy Chick





However some artists choose to ignore all of the typical conventions, this is normally typical of Indie bands and dance acts. The example below by Aphex Twin doesn't use any of the normal conventions and is designed to shock and surpirse the viewer.

Storyboard

Although I have already posted a storyboard animatic I thought it would be a good idea to show you the individual pictures of our storyboard so you can spend as much time as you like looking at our ideas.

Before going out to film we need to make a story board to give us an outline of what we are going to film so we dont go out blindly and ending up wasting days out filming and camera footage. The storyboard will contain; a detailed picture (or as detailed as we can) of what we expect the shot to look like, the duration of that shot, and what type of camera shots we will be aiming to use. We are confident that our storyboard will conquer this as we now know exactly what to do. Here it is:

Above are shots 1-8

and Below are shots 9-16

We realise that just these shots are not enough for the entire video but we have only drawn out roughly the rest of the video so we will be re-doing them neatly and putting them on the blog as soon as we can. 

Filming Schedule

To make sure we used our time productively and efficiently enough to make sure we got as much done as humanly possible we decided to make a schedule on where/when we needed to film and what we needed etc. To make sure we complete the video on time and have enough time left to edit the footage we need to make sure we stick to this schedule and complete it to a high enough standard.

As you can see below I split a table up into 3 rows (one for each day of filming) and 5 columns, these were split into; Scene, Location, Cast and Crew, Costumes/Props and Time to Meet. I have made it this basic so everyone can easily see what we need to be doing and when, also so nobody has an excuse if they do not show up.

Once we have filmed our scenes and got enough footage we would need to start editing. Below I have devised a second schedule but this time for the school time we are able to use in the Mac room editing. As you can see it is separated into the days of the week and along the top the lessons of the day, totalling to 6. After I constructed the table Charlie and I sat down together and discussed what days/lessons of the week we were free. After we found out what lessons we had free we would shade in the box that we could spend editing. Below is the table.

Change of Plans

As another one of our group member have left we need to do a lsat minute change of plan as she was our main character. For this reason we have drafted in a member of another group to help act for us. As she is very creative we can tell she will be a better actor than our previous choice and will put her own spin on the song which is good seeing as we dont have much time left. But overall we are very happy that the group member has left so now we have another very imaginitive person in the group.

Group Member Leaving

I have just received some rather bad news that Megan, one of our group members and dear friends, has left sixth form thus meaning she will not be carrying on with media this year. This was a bit of a shock at first and we have had to re-think our ideas as she was meant to be our main character and driving us to Southend.

Possible Locations

Today we discussed possible locations of where to film our video. We came up with quite a few ideas, the initial locations were; a beach, an arcade, firework show, theme park rides (adventure island) these are all shown below: