Evaluation: Q.1

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

Whilst creating my media products (music video and my ancillary texts) I was aware of the codes and conventions that were associated with them. I therefore demonstrated my ability to adhere to and challenge these codes and conventions.

I began by looking at my music video and identifying the codes and conventions that I used, developed and challenged, along with other music videos that I have researched and found inspirations from. The presentation can be seen below:

After looking at my video, my attention turned to my ancillary texts. In the videos below, I have analysed my media products and explained how I have used developed and challenged forms of real media products.  

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*CAUTION* In the video below where I am analysing my album advert, it shows the release date and the band name to be in the colour blue and the colour of the background appears to be faded. Please be aware that my printer had no green ink for the band name and release date and as well that my printer was starting to run out of ink. I chose the colour green as it has connotations of nature and as this album is album travelling I felt that nature connotations should be included. So please have this in mind when watching. Thanks!



In summary, my media products have a variety of ways of using, developing and challenging forms of real media texts. Some examples include using a known rule; the rule of thirds in splitting up a poster in making it easier to view from an audiences perspective. Another example, this time of challenging real media texts is from using design on my ancillary tasks and adding text whereas normally, an audience would know who the artist would be straight away. I think my music video and my ancillary texts have used, developed and challenged forms and conventions of real media texts very well even thought if I could do it all again, I would have challenged the real media texts more to make my pieces much more unique.

Evaluation Introduction

After finishing all my tasks for my media A level coursework, it is time for the evaluation! 💪
I will be answering 4 questions in great detail using different forms of 2.0 web tools to clearly evaluate and analyse the success of my media products. The questions are as follows:

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

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

•  What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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

I will now start the first question of the evaluation. 

Audience Feedback On Video

After we finished our video, we decided to get feedback from an audience who fit in our demographic for the video. We gave them a laptop in order to watch the video so they could comment on it and give feedback.


 


Overall, the feedback was mostly positive and I am so glad due to the fact that we worked so hard on completing our finished product. It makes me feel so happy that all our hard work was a success!

Final Music Video

The finished video!

We have finally finished our music video and I am so so happy with the end result. We have worked extremely hard in getting the perfect video and I think we have reached our goal. We have taken all feedback both from our teachers and target audience, into account and made sure we created a video as best as it can be; what with the filming, editing, all micro features and we have also taken into account how the research and planning affects the finished video as a whole. This is because, if we had not done all the storyboarding etc in a proper way, we would not have ended up with a finished product such as this one.



I have learned a lot from this experience and working within a team. I think we all worked well together, incorporating our ideas with one another and allowing each other to listen if something didn't quite work out and deciding whether to change something if need be. Overall, I am extremely proud with how far we have come and I am so happy we have pulled this off as it has given me an insight as to what it is like to make videos in the industry, reinforcing my thoughts as to wanting to work in media/film in the future. 

Digipak and Album Advert Development 2

Overall, from making both the digipak and the album advert, I have expanded my knowledge and become aware of what makes both media texts successful. I understand that although they have to look aesthetically pleasing it is important that information is conveyed as that is the job of a digipak after all. It is supposed to give more information about the band or artist as well as involve a CD of all the songs in the album. 


Finished products:

Development in digipak and album advert 1

As I had to plan and develop my digipak, I thought as the front cover is what an audience would see first when purchasing the album, I had to make sure I had got it just right. I started with the picture of the character, Sean leaning against this tree. I then thought the picture could do with a filter or two to make the pixels much more contrasting and this looked better in my opinion as well as the opinion of others such as my peers who are a possible target audience.

I then decided to download the font shown on the image below and used it within Photoshop due to the fact it was legible and I thought it suited the artist. In order to make the front cover much more exciting, I thought adding a black rectangle behind the artist's name would work and so I thought I would be finished. However after having feedback from my teachers and peers, it was evident that although I was going for the 'simple' look, this front cover came across too simple and I had to decide what to do next.

By this time I had planned out the rest of my digipak and had done drafts of all the panels. For instance, below shows the 'contact us' page and I liked the idea of the colour scheme which includes black and white as it adds an individual tone to the piece and linked with the black and white photo in which I took of the main actor and edited to fit this particular theme of the digipak so far. This photo is also shown below. 

After thinking the digipak didn't look right, I decided to change the whole thing and started from scratch. I had been to New York recently and thought this picture could look just right as after all, the album is called Traverse and implies travelling and this looked great for a place to travel. Speaking from experience it was a amazing to travel there!

I started working on this as the new front page, nevertheless, I wasn't feeling it and decided that designing my own cover could be much more beneficial. 

 Like last year when I made the magazine, I remembered that I used blurry circles to create an effect that took on the role of individuality. As the artist that I am doing has a genre of indie pop, I the design of the circles could have the same effect. I searched the internet for the right image in which i could rip apart on photoshop by choosing a section from the image and duplicating each layer that I would copy and past onto the image. Below this displays the image in which I chose.  

During the editing process for this image, I used the quick selection tool and dragged it to allow for the section I wanted to use to be highlighted. ↘

I then copied and pasted this particular section so it was on its own on the page, and I thought the colour of the image was too bright so this is what I did:

I clicked on image adjustments and played around with the different techniques that could make the colour of the image become better to look at aesthetically. After playing around with each option, I finally got to this colour and thought it would work for the digipak. (shown below). 

After this, I decided to duplicate the layer and over lap each one on top of each other in order to create a full background in which would create the overall effect that I wanted to achieve. 

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In development for the album advert, I started making this when I changed my idea to suit travelling (when I thought I should use the image from New York). The image is shown below. 

I thought that this would work well with that particular theme that I was going for. I had edited the brightness and the contrast within this picture as I wanted to make it look aesthetically pleasing so it would help the fans want to go and buy the album or poster for that matter.

However, when I changed the whole digipak idea to purely designing it all this no longer fit within the theme and therefore I had to disregard it as I was headed for something better - which is where I used the same design as my digipak so it would all link.

Nevertheless, after all this development of my digipak and album advert, I have to say I have learnt so much more than I ever did on photoshop and am grateful for my errors purely because of this reason.  

Permission to use Bowling Alley

As Yasmin's father knows the owner of the bowling alley, he messaged him and asked if we could use that location to film there for the video. In reply, the owner said it was fine and this then gave us permission to film there. It is evident in situations such as these that if one doesn't ask, then they won't get what they want. 

Additional footage

As we have to fit in a certain time slot for each shot in the music video, we decided to leave the camera running for a bit longer than expected in order to play around with which bit we prefer in the edit. This concept also gives us options on whether to make that particular shot longer or shorter. 

Rough Cut/Draft of 505 Music Video

As we needed to make sure we get the video right as a finishing media text, we decided that drafting the video would benefit us most. This is so that we would know where we need to amend and make improvements to the video so that it can be a best as it can be. As the video above is a rough cut, there are a lot of black outs as we had not filmed that particular footage yet. However as all the footage we had was all together we got a better outline of how the video will end up looking, and so far we were pleased. 

Lip Syncing

This is the video for lip syncing practice. We taught the words to our main actor, although it did help that he knew the song and he knew most of the words. Our strategy was to play the song on a phone, roll the camera and then Sean would sing along with the track so that he would be in time with the professional singer and it would make it easier when it came to the editing.

As well as Sean (played by Max) having to learn how to lip sync, I had to as well. Due to the fact that I acted as his on set (ex) girlfriend. We did the same strategy with playing the song on the phone, rolling the camera and I would lip sync the lyrics to the song of that particular section. I learnt a lot from this experience as timing is everything.

Digipak Photo Shooting

These are pictures in which were taken for myself and my other group members to use for the digipak's that we have to make as part of our ancillary tasks which includes an album advert as well. I am happy with the images that we took and I will edit the ones I choose to use on photoshop in order to make it more creative as an overall piece.  

From taking and being in these photos I found that the picture will only work if the subject in it is in 'character' as it would look obvious if otherwise portrayed differently and it would not look right.

Evaluation On Production Days

Sunday 26th November

This was the first day in which we filmed. We arrived at Ollie's house (which would be acting as my house in the video) and we got Sean to come as he is playing our main singer of the band as well as acting as my on screen boyfriend. We decided as a group that we should shoot most of the fantasy sequences on this day that occur at 'my' house. I laid in bed in a white jumper as the lyrics are about lying on the side and Yasmin filmed from a few different angles, including from the front and the back where I was sleeping. After this, Sean and I were told to do fight scene where Ollie filmed us arguing from over the shoulder of the other. While we were arguing, we mimed the lyrics of 505 so we would be able to cut our lip sync together with the actual song in the edit. We then went on the bed and had more of a fully blown argument where we made it look like 'couples fighting' even though we were just arguing about chocolate.

There were many different camera angles that were shot of this scene due to the fact we needed a lot of choice when we came to post production. I was positioned behind Sean, whereas he was in front. The gap between us displayed the relationship splitting and coming to an end.

In order to get most of the filming out of the way, we decided to do the end scene which is where I am shown having taken too many pills and I am position flat on the floor with my arm out having pills near me. After this we went to the forest and shot more scenes so that we could start editing and get a head start with the video. We also took pictures for the digipak and album advert on this day.

I think this day went well for the first time shooting together as a group and I look forward to the next day of shooting.

Friday 9th December

On this day, we went to the bowling alley where I was filmed by Yasmin playing bowling. Due to Yasmin's dad knowing the owner, we were able to film and play the game for free. As I am not the best at bowling, Yasmin took some shots and Ollie filmed her ball hitting the pins as she could make most of the pins fall over. So in the video, it would look as if my character is actually good at bowling.

This was the only day that we had access to the bowling alley so we made the most of it and played one game of basketball on the certain machine. This worked well as I pretended to throw the ball at the camera (which would be max) and in the video, he would dunk in a different location as if to show uncertainty in their relationship which is why my character is throwing objects at him in anger.

This was another successful day of filming and I couldn't wait to continue onto the next day.

Saturday 10th December
On this day, we went to a pub where Yasmin took a polaroid picture of me reading a menu so that when she went to Max's house to film him he could look at that picture while being filmed, in order to make him look as if he is reminiscing his relationship and missing the happy moments they shared together.
I thought by this point as it was going so well  with the filming, that we have something special to put together in the edit.

Saturday 7th January
This was our last official day of filming the rest of our music video. I was asked to 'look sexy' while I stoked my leg and tapped on the chair for Sean to come and sit next to me. It took a few takes as I had to get used to acting promiscuously. We had fun filming this because of that, nevertheless we were able to get the shot in the end.
On this day, we also filmed Sean singing to the camera in order to create the performance style for the video. We placed him in front of a cream/white wall so that on final cut, we would be able to play with the colours we see on that particular shot and make it darker or lighter - whichever looks better in the editing process.
After we finished the shots of him singing and the high angle of the stroking of the leg shot, we thought my character should cry blood so we put ketchup on my face for it to look like tears, neverthess, it didn't look very realistic so we rejected that idea and went to to get some shots outside in different shops.

This was a great way to finish the filming as I enjoyed every bit of it. I can't wait to see the finished project after it's edited.