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Tuesday 20 December 2011

Q4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

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

Below is a Jing video that we have created, with a voice over explaining what technologies we have used through the use of Blog. 

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Technology used for Research:


Technology used for Planning:

Technology Used for Evaluation





Setting up the tripod, ready for filming
This simply shows me setting up the tripod by releasing the legs to make the shot reach the characters level. It also keeps the shot steady and prevents it from wobbling and making it look unprofessional.


EDITING SKILLS



Here I have created a short video of myself editing some music video footage. I filmed myself by using a digital camera on a tripod then edited it into a short sequence with Final cut. To an audience it is not clear what I am doing therefore I used Youtube and the tagging tool to explain what I was doing.

Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?



Here I have created four different edits of the same digi pack cover, however I wanted to know what my audience would want therefore as our target audience is around my age group of 18 and teenagers I decided to post the images on facebook and wait for a response. This was good as the friends I have on face book are mostly my age therefore I am specifically getting opinions from the audience I want. Now I have a good Idea of what edition I will use in the final digi pack cover.



To gain real audience feedback from the target audience of young adults and teenager, I decided to ask a few people to watch the video then give me their personal technical opinions of what they thought. they told me what they thought went well, however what I could improve on.

One of the major improvements was the green screen issue as you can still see the green outline around the character. This problem was down to the creased green sheet behind the character when we were filming which we found especially difficult to straighten out and needed some help from others in the class. However we did not realise how much this would effect our editing when we convert it to the Mac, and it obviously effects the audience when they watch it. I feel it looks unprofessional in comparison to the rest of the video with clean and steady shots, therefore we asked our school technicians for detailed help to perfect the green screen so it doesn't let down the rest of the video.

On the other hand they did recognise the parts which we thought went well including showing the male pop genre, lip syncing and using London locations to link to the lyrics and themes of the songs.


Facebook advertisement and PUBLIC anonymous Questionnaire




CLOSED AND OPEN QUESTIONS
DROP DOWN MENU
Due to the success of creating a questionnaire last year when evaluating my thriller opening, I decided to create another one to ask my target audience, of young adults, to get an idea of what they are thinking and the best and weakest points about the video and Digipack.

A SCREEN GRAB OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE
I first of all posted my music video online on my Facebook page so anyone can watch the video and write their opinion. I also supplied a link to the questionnaire for the audience to complete after watching the music video along with the posted Digipack. This allowed me to ask the audience whether they felt it all merged together into creating a Brand identity and if the digipack and CD cover advertised the feeling and meaning of the song.

I had some varied and honest feedback from the audience but overall it gave me truthful and useful information to what we can do to improve. I have created some useful charts and graphs which are clear for me to see specific data of the response I received.

RESPONSE FROM QUESTIONNAIRE 

These are the editing techniques which were suggested to use to improve the video/ Digipack:
- Black and white coloured shots to add interest and change the scenery and atmosphere slightly
- Cross fade of locations
- Smoother cuts between shots
- Slow motion
- Colour adding
- Flash effects
- Merge clips together of the separate characters in different locations and overlap them so you can see them at the same time even though they're not together
- Apply a dual narrative

Do you think the performance of the artist is good in terms of energy and expression? 

This question gave us some great responses as the majority of people enjoyed watching our artist perform however he still could have been more expressive by using a wider range of facial expressions and body language for example hand gestures and getting into character.

How engaged does the video keep you? 


The main aim of making our music video is to engage the performer throughout from start to finish and we couldn't tell this ourselves as we are the ones who have been editing it and producing it. Therefore we asked our target audience of young adults whether it kept them engaged and received a varied response with people rating as low as 5 up to a rating of 10. Even more so the majority was a rating of 8 which we feel is a great response, as people felt the performance he gave really reflected the lyrics of the song of him feeling a 'stranger' to London, through slightly enclosed body language.


Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

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



We decided on a font called 'Hasteristico' which we discovered on a website called DaFont. At first both myself and Charlotte found it difficult to decide on the name of our artist, as we wanted to keep it simple but still having a coolness about it. When we decided on the name 'Frank Miller' we thought that our font should represent our artist just as much as the name did. Therefore, the font is quite plain but is still strong and fits perfectly when representing a male indie/pop artist. As you can see from our video clip, we had other idea's of using other interesting fonts, however I think that some of them could have been a bit distracting and taken away the concept and effect of our advert + digipack.

make a gif at gickr.com


I have made a gif merging the ancillary tasks including both mine and Brittany's adverts along with our digipack which we created together. It really reveals the colour scheme of orange/ yellow which portrays the theme of bright lights and the vibrant atmosphere in London. I feel this really works as it gives the artist a brand identity just like Ed Sheeran who uses the colour orange at the front of his album cover. We also decided to hide the artists face in the front cover of the album to show the importance of the music to the artist rather than his full body image to attract his audience. This is one of Ed Sheerans main characteristic and as he was one of our main influences we feel this is very important to show in the image of our artist



Even though we decided that the image of our artist wasn't as important as the music, we still done a lot of thorough research into our artists outfit, as we had to choose carefully the colours and styles that we were wearing as we wanted Frank Miller to have the 'typical London look' for a male. You could suggest that this went against the combination of our main product as the lyrics to his song are about him feeling lost and swallowed up by this new hectic lifestyle he has been brought into. Therefore, we could have styled him in more of a unique way to convey the theme of him feeling lost and lonely. However, we still wanted to keep him current and fresh, and therefore we decided to use well known brands such as Hollister, and use the colour scheme of red and white in his costumes throughout. We decided to use both these colours as not only do they contrast, but the red represents his passion for music whereas the use of the white imagery represents his innoncence and naiveity to his new lifestyle that he is trying to adapt to.






Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?





  Here is a Gif which reveals the fast motion editing from Ed Sheeran's video A Team. As you can see the character is not moving however the uneasy traffic around her is bright, vivid and maybe overwhelming for her. We have used the same effect in our video various times to emphasise how London maybe intimidating and overwhelming for people who are not used to such a busy and populated area.


View more PowerPoint from Charlotte Hannah

Thursday 15 December 2011

Chosen Record Label

We have decided that SYCO would be our Record label for the release of our music Video. We have chosen this Label as it's a large well known company and has signed many successful artists and would be able to push our music video further into the market. It also based in London and established by Simon Cowell who is a Worldwide know agent who has years of experience and a good eye for making good pop music, therefore would be a great benefit and help to have Simon Cowell producing and releasing the video.

It also focuses on promoting it's artists through TV therefore the Music video would get a lot of coverage to audiences if it was successful.

- It links well to the chosen genre of male indie- pop
- Other Artists are Olly Murs and Mat Cardle who are also Indie- pop artists.
- It is based in London

Music Video Assessment


After a few weeks of filming, we edited about 30 seconds of footage to show to the class which allowed us to get feedback from our peers to help us with what we can do to improve. For example we used the green screen, however there is still some green that is visible which we need to tweek. Also this is more visible on a larger screen, explaining why we could not see it as easily on the Mac whilst editing.