Evaluation Question 4 (By Voke, Emily, Sophie and Vicky)

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

The internet played an integral role in the research, planning and construction of everything. Before we could do anything, concrete research had to be undertaken by each of us in our group. There were various sources we used in the research of our music video. One of the first things we did was to search for our actual song that we would use. We used the internet website youtube.com, in search of our song choices. After using youtubes search engine, it came down to just two songs: 

1. Foals - Olympic Airways
2. Bloc Party - Flux

1.Foals - Olympic Airways

Click thumbnail to view music video ..

2.Bloc Party- Flux

Click thumbnail to view music video ..

After careful deliberation, it was decided that our group use Bloc Party -Flux. The final decision was down to our teacher Mrs Mcluckie who approved of us using this song. The research didn't stop there as we then had to watch several videos to pick out certain elements from these videos and find a way to emulate these elements into our own music video. The original video for Bloc Party -Flux didn't have any elements in its content that we felt we could extract. The reason we couldn't use anything from this video was because of the relationship between he lyrics and the visuals. 

Bloc Party's Music Video

The videos we researched were; 

1. Pixie Lott - All About Tonight
2. Rihanna - Russian Roulette 
3. Ellie Gouldings  - Lights 
4. Kanye West - All of the Lights 
5. The Script - The Man Who Couldn't be Moved

These videos all had there individual elements that we felt would work with our video. For example, both Pixie Lotts and Rihanna's videos gave us the ideas of overlays in our music video. Ellie Goulding's and Kanye West's video interested us  because of the strobe lighting aspect of it. We felt that this may be a unique aspect to our music video, as most other groups weren't thinking of incorporating this type of lighting in their own videos. Because our music video was performance and narrative, we had to sure our lip synching was in time with the lyrics of our song. We looked at The Script - The Man Who Couldn't be Moved, to research how the lip synching was used effectively. 

After researching into the elements for our music video, the ancillary task was the final and finished piece for our A2 coursework. Because we were looking at doing the posters for a magazine and album cover, we had to look at several examples of posters and album covers. After looking at several examples, we knew what things to emulate. For our poster, we looked at several posters including: 

1. Rihanna's Loud poster
2. Green Day's Wake Me up When September Ends 
3. Noah and the Whale
4. Jay-Z and Kanye West' Watch the Throne poster

All these posters gave us some sort of insight into what needs to be put into our own advert. The elements that we identified were as follows:

• The star ratings 
• Quotes from critics, newspapers and magazines
• Website for the band 
• Placing our album cover on the poster

All of the posters we analysed were found on a search engine named google.com. The images we found online gave us an outline of what we needed to do for our own poster. We also did the same for our album cover by looking online for images of Bloc Party's previous album covers and trying to identify some elements that we to could use. All of Bloc Party's images on the front cover of the album was that of scenery, except one. Another house style they had made use of was the same style font in all of their albums. When analysing these covers we felt it necessary to try and emulate there font. Using the online website Dafont.com, we looked for different fonts that were similar to that of Bloc Party's. The font that we as a group decided to use was 'Code', which like Bloc Party's signature  masthead came as a bold version which is perfect for our own album masthead. The font is a house style hat we want to keep in our digipak. 

Click thumbnail for Final Cut Pro Tutorial

As a group, we looked at tutorials on youtube when we needed to learn how certain things were done in the editing process of Final Cut Pro.  Some things we looked at was the split screen effect, whereby two images were placed side by side and moving simultaneously. Apart from this we all used our own initiative into the editing of editing of music video.

Facebook allowed our group to communicate and gain feedback from our target audience. In regards to communication, facebook, the social network website enabled us to plan when we were to meet up to begin filming and taking pictures. We communicated using the inbox tool on Facebook.

Facebook feedback

Facebook feedback

Facebook feedback

Cameras

On our very first day of filming in Camden Town, we used as proffessional camera that was borrowed from a friend on Sophie Jansen's. The camera was a "Canon 1234B002 Model EOS 30D (SRL)". The camera had a lot to offer with its stunning and awe-inspiring HD lens and great zooming ability. One downside with this camera that it was ver complex and complicated to us as it had very many functions. We had to use SD cards to save our filing which proved to be quite a challenege as the filming took up a lot of memory, as we inevitably ended up using 6 memory cards in just one shoot. Changing the SD cards meant that a lot of time was taken up as we were constantly changing them. 

After our rough cut, we felt it best that we use a less complicated camera and use the camera that our school would provide for us. The name of the camera given to us by our school "Sony DCR-TRV19E".  The "Sony DCR-TRV19E" proved a worthy contender with the"Canon 1234B002 Model EOS 30D (SRL)" as the effectiveness of the camera was clear from the beginning, due to the lack of difficulty involved in using it. We found that with the first camera we used, the complicated buttons and knobs on it made it harder to fully use. Although the images we captured were not as clear and highly defined as the "Canon 1234B002 Model EOS 30D (SRL)", this camera was still managed to capture some great footage.

Final Cut

Final cut was an important software that was available to us on the Apple Mac computers that we were using. The main purpose of Final Cut was for the diting of our music video and to edit any other videos that we were to post or publish on our blogs. The editing process was down to Vicky Gordon and Emily Fry, as they were accustomed to using the software and felt comfortable editing our music video.

To use final cut, the video or in this case our video had to be imported into Final Cut and dragged down into a bar below the video. As well as the video, the audio of the song had to be imported and then dragged and locked in the audio bar which again is below the video. Final Cut allowed us to do so many things, such as; use overlays, transitions etc. Throughout our video there are a variety of transitions such cross dissolves. The effects button on the top of Final Cut was responsible for the transitions and other effects we felt we wanted to add to our music video. Because some of the lighting in our video was a bit bleached out, the opacity of the video had to be lowered so that the bleached out effect became less visible.

Not only did we use Final Cut for our music video, we first used it for our storyboard which was done in an animatic form. This was basically a guideline for our group to follow when making our real video in Final Cut. For my own video in Question 1, I used several transitions when creating the video. Before I started my video, I played around with several things so that I could become used to the software as it was my first time using it.  

Quick Time and MPEG Streamclip

Once our video was completed on Final Cut and we were happy with the finished product, it had to be placed on our blogs. Before we could publish this post with our music video on it, we had to export the video into MPEG Streamclip so that it was the correct format for our blog to be able to post it. The format that we then converted it to in MPEG Stream clip was MPEG4. This was the only way of the video being visible on our blogs.

Photoshop

The software Photoshop was used in the production of our digipak which included both our magazine poster and our CD album cover. Both Emily and Vicky took responsibility for the making of our magazine poster whereas Sophie was in charge of making the CD cover for the digipak. The CD cover had to include the front, the back and the insides of the album. The images that were put into Photoshop were mostly screen grabs taken from our music video.  Because of the experience we had gained at AS level whilst using Photoshop, we were already accustomed to using the tools used in the editing of several images. 

Blogger

Blogger throughout our 2 years of being a media student, has played a vital role in my coursework. Without Blogger, my coursework wouldn't exist. Blogger allows you to post text, images and videos all which are presented in form of coursework. Blogger allowed us to deliver very informative posts about our work for the past 2 years.

Evaluation Question 3 (By Voke, Emily, Sophie and Vicky)

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

 Feedback was very important when making when all three media platforms had been completed. We as a group needed to see what people thought about it all the products and whether it appealed to our target audience. After we had created our rough cut, we felt it necessary to get feedback from the people who had seen the video which were our classmates and teacher. We then asked both our teacher and our classmates to make notes on the negative and positive aspects of our music video as well as any changes they felt we needed to implement. The overall comments we received were "Great use of the lip syncing technique", Nice cuts", "Great storyline". That was some of the positive feedback that we received. As well as positive feedback, we also received some negative comments; "The editing of the film needs to be more like the animatic which was fast pace", "The signs were up for too long", "The lighting in some places were bleached out". Overall we knew what needed to be changed and what should remain the same. The overall feeling we got when reading the comments were that the video was enjoyable and that was very likable.                

After we had edited the rough cut, we felt it necessary to post our video on the social networking website, 'Facebook'. Doing this allowed our friends outside of our media class to see our video and give us there feedback and comments on the video. Most of our friends on Facebook are regular teenagers who our music video would genuinely apply to, as most of our friends are of an Indie genre. The feedback we got was to our surprise quite critical and precise from our friends who aren't from a media sort of background or knowledge. The majority of our friends who commented and liked our music video said that they liked the video story line and that its something that can be seen on music channels. Also that the tempo of the music was fast paced, making it more exciting. Below are some of the comments that we received from our final cut.



Above, Sophie Jansen created a wall for those who didn't have facebook to comment and give feedback on our video.

Facebook Feedback

Facebook Feedback

Facebook Feedback

Along with the facebook posting, both Media classes were put together in our classroom for a private viewing of each of our own music videos. We were to closely analyse everybody else's videos and make comments on each others videos. This was a good idea, as gaining feedback from our classmates would be good way to see how much our music video had improved since our rough cut. Just as we expected, the new comments on our music changed as there were more positive comments such as; "Clear and concise storyline", "Pace of the music was in time with the pace of the video", "The timing of the lip syncing has improved". With these comments, we knew that we had achieved what needed to be achieved in terms of appealing to our target audience.

With our Digipak, we felt that this could be one of our strong points in the coursework as we had already had experience in designing and making music magazines from AS. After creating both the CD cover and the magazine advert poster, we asked our teacher for her view on the two. Our teacher who is very critical and honest felt that our Digipak was very good. However, she also felt that we let ourselves down on the CD cover as it didn't really link with the magazine poster. When being told this, we then went back to create yet another CD cover which would make close links with the magazine poster. We looked at several examples on the internet of artists who had done two different covers for their CD e.g. Jessie J, Coldplay etc. Because of our research, we knew what had to be done to our own CD cover to greatly improve it and after doing this, our teacher felt that both the magazine poster and the CD cover were linked.

Overall, we felt that we appealed to our target audience who we in the beginning set out to please and that our music video suited the genre we were looking to emulate. We as a group feel that the demands of our Indie genre have been met as 40% of our viewers were of an Indie genre and felt that they could relate themselves to our video.

Here is a quick video of our feedback from both our main task and ancillary task (Music video and Digipak) 

Evaluation Question 2

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

For our ancillary task we had to do two of the following 3:

• a website homepage for the band;
• a cover for its release as part of the digipak (CD/DVD package);
• a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).

As a group we decided that we would do an album cover for the release of our music video. Along with the album cover, we chose to do a  magazine advertistment for our digipak. 

Narrative

An important convention in the creation of music videos is narrative. This convention is particularly important as the audience need to be able to understand and get the general idea of what is going on in the music video via language, visuals etc.

The opening scene of our music video sees Jake our actor with his eyes closed, as though in a dream or in deep thought. The overlay of Jake and Emily together further enhances this idea of a dream or deep thought. As Jake's eyes open, it is as though he has come back to reality. We as a group felt that continuity is very important when making both the music video and our digipaks. Given these views of continuity, our digipak front cover is of Jake with his eyes closed which interlinks both the video and the digipak together.

 















Our actor Jake had to portray traits of anger, regret, confusion, sadness, which are typical themes in our target audience. The way in which we convey these themes are by our actors gestures throughout the music video. We also used strobe lighting effects to highlight an element of confusion in the audience and also to show a state of flux or change in the music video. In our Digipak we used images of our close up's to create an image of a cover in our Digipak. The close ups in the video portray the relationship in our actors. There were also uses of overlays which showed our actor Jake cutting his arm over the lyric 'If your right arm is causing you pain, cut it off ..'. We felt it necessary to add on this overlay to portray his sadness, anger and confusion.

 Lighting

One style that we felt would fit in perfectly with our target audience was the use of dark lighting across all three mediums. One of the main aspects of lighting in our music video was the strobe lighting effects. Our feedback commented a lot on the use of the strobe lighting effect and how it was there favorite aspect of the music video and really stood out. 

The use of strobe lights were not used by any other group in our year and this was picked up on in our feedback, making our music video stand out. Our magazine poster image are several shots taken from our chorus where the strobe lighting is in full effect. That was the link between our ancillary task and our main task. The image on the poster works very well, as anyone who has seen the video would be able to identify that the images used on the poster were taken from our music video.

We used the element of strobe lighting effects, as we knew it would appeal to our target audience of 18-25 year olds who are accustomed to this type of lighting due to knowledge of the club scene. The font of our magazine poster and our album cover was very important, as we wanted to emulate Bloc Party's house style. The font 'Code Light' was downloaded from Dafont.com and was the closest possible font we could use to emulate that of Bloc Party. 

Bloc Party's Font

Our poster font

Our CD cover font

Main Promotional image

A cyclical idea was suggested for our album cover which in turn creates a house style of its own. The main image or front cover of our album cover was that of Jake our actor with his eyes open in a close up frame. At the back of the album cover is an image of Jake with his eyes closed which was the cyclical design than we had agreed on using.

The links between all 3 platforms:

• We used images from our music video and placed them into both our album cover and our magazine poster which if viewed by its audience would automatically be able to relate the images with the music video.
• The focus on our main character Jake was important across all three platforms. He was a central element in images we used in our album cover and magazine poster. The images of Jake were taken from our music video.

There were several elements that we changed throughout the creation of our music video. The location was very important in the filming of our music video and was originally filmed in Camden Town. But due to atmosphere and expenses, the location needed to change. When changing our location, we decided it was best to stay locally e.g. Dartford, Longfield. We also changed the concept of a narrative video but instead made it both narrative and performance based. 

This was a change that worked in our favor which changed the look of our final cut on the whole. The locality of our locations also worked in our favor, as it saved both time and money. We were all able to meet regularly in these location when it was required of us.

Evaluation Question 1

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


There are several forms and conventions of real media products such as camera work, lighting, mise en scene camera shots and so on. Earlier during the year, we gathered research in the conventions of music videos. Some of the research found included theories from Andrew Goodwin.


Andrew Goodwin identified a number of key features which are present in music videos. Some of these features include:

1. A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.
2. A relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.
3. Multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist.
4. Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females.
5. Intertextual references to other media texts may be present.

Andrew Goodwin believed that the relationship both the performance and the narrative of a music video keeps the audience engaged and interested. Goodwin also felt that the amplification and the contradiction of lyrics was very important in a conventional music video. For example 'I was walking down the street' as a lyric could be accompanied by the visuals of an individual maybe walking down an alley or a narrow road therefore 'amplifying' the lyrics of the song. Voyeurism is used to increase the video’s attractiveness to the audience, especially in males, whilst intertextuality is often employed in humorous videos. Another important convention that Goodwin felt strongly about was 'lip syncing'. 


Lip Syncing 

This is a technical term for matching lip movements with sung or spoken vocals. The term can refer to any of a number of different techniques and processes, in the context of live performances, recordings and music videos. Originally, our rough cut was solely narrative based because we felt that this would work well with our song choice. After the rough cut was complete, we got feedback from our classmates and our teacher. The feedback we received meant that there were a lot of substantial changes that needed to be made. One of the first changes was changing our video to become both a narrative and a performance video. The majority of Indie music video consist of the singer lip syncing to the song. Lip syncing is widely recognised and used by many Indie artists.

Image 1

Image 2 

Image 

Lighting


The lighting of a music video is also an important convention which should be taken into consideration when making a music video. As a group we did our research on the lighting of different music videos. A technique we used in our video, was the use of strobe lighting effects. This was repeated several times in our chorus along with the use of low key lighting to amplify the lyrics in the chorus 'State of Flux' highlighting a change in something and a also a sense of confusion. The pace of the music allowed the strobe lighting to fit in perfectly with our music video. The strobe lighting effect proved effective as some of the feedback we received mentioned the effectiveness of the strobe lights. The idea of the strobe lighting effects came after we did our research on some music videos such as "Kanye West All of the Lights Ft Rihanna"  and "Ellie Goulding - Lights". We used an effect none as 'desaturation'  for certain parts of he video where he was looking back into the past which may highlight how distant a memory the clip is.

Mis-en-scene

Another very important convention used in the creation of music videos is mis-en-scene as it tells a story. Mis-en-scene consists of various factors including, clothing, settings, props, actors etc. All these factors must be taken into consideration when making a music video. As a group we did our research and decided that the settings that we'd use would be Camden and Longfield. After our first day out of filming and editing the rough cut, we realised that the lighting for the video didn't really look as proffesional as it should have been. On our second attempt at filming and editing, the locations of our filming had then changed to Dartford, Camden and Longfield. This time round, because we filmed in the day light, the image we got had a much greater quality than that of the first.


Clothing was also very important in our music video. The clothing used in a music videos help the audience identify with the genre of music.For our actress 'Emily', we needed her to wear bright red lipstick for our extreme close up of her. This was something we'd taken from one of Ed Sheeran's videos. We were trying to convey an Indie look, with our Actor 'Jake' by making him wear a heavily knitted jumper, covered by a coat, a pair of slim fit trousers with desert boots. Naturally, we chose Jake as our actor because he himself fits into the category of an Indie. We wanted him to as though he was deep in thought most of the time, so we felt it necessary for him to have his hood up sometimes. For example, when he is standing alone in the streets of Camden with people walking around him, he looks somewhat disjointed, isolated and alone. Gestures would also prove to be important in any music video, as it is an indicator as to how a certain character is feeling. For example, someone singing and smiling in a music video can be seen as happy and cheerful and is usually connected to an upbeat and cheerful song. 


Editing
The editing of our music video would prove to be very challenging and time consuming as the fast pace and beat of the song meant that the video had to follow suit and also 'keep up' or be in sync with the music. Both Emily Fry and Vicky Gordon had to practice by 

The above image shows our clips we put into Final Cut Pro to make our music video. The process of creating the music video talk several weeks for us to identify ourselves with Final Cut Pro. There are several different transitions within the whole video. In the video, we took two different scenes and put them into a split screen which shows both Jake and Emily's lips moving in sync saying "We need to talk".  The pace of our song drove the pace of the editing. The fast pace of the song was highlighted by our actor' "Jake" becoming more and more frustrated to the point of him removing some of his clothing, his facial expressions, gestures etc and the strobe lighting.


The illusion that both overlays and transitions such as cross dissolves was that of a flashback or past memory. In our video, we tried to emulate the convention of the flashback, by making use of both overlays and transitions. "If your right hand is causing you pain, cut it off, cut it off", was one of the lyrics we decided to pick up on try and create an overlay to go with the lyrics. We used that particular lyric to highlight how our actor Jake was feeling at the time or in the past as we needed the audience to get an idea of the narrative.



This image on the right is of Pixie Lots All about tonight video. Before creating our video, we did some research into the use of overlays in music videos and stumbled across this overlay which was used perfectly in this video. The overlay was used as a transition to slowly move onto the next clip whilst still seeing the image of before.

After our research in to overlays, we had to find where it would be appropriate for us to place our own overlay. The image of Jake about to cut himself with a knife was placed just behind our actor whilst he sang "If your right hand is causing you pain, cut it off, cut it off". This overlay worked well in our video and gave the audience a chance to get to understand the narrative.

Digipak Construction

Firstly, before anything was done, research would prove to be essential in the design and construction of the digipak. As a group we concluded that we would emulate the same or similar house styles to that of the group 'Bloc Party'.

The image on the right is an example of Bloc Party's Cd designs, which we thought had some attributes that we may use for our own digipak. On the left is an image of our first digipak design. We tried to stick to the same font as Bloc Party to keep the house style the same. The title of the Band 'Bloc Party' and the title of the album go across the middle of the CD.

The digipak, was being constructed in Photoshop by Sophie Jansen. She designed more than one digipak to see how each would look using different designs.

Different layers were used in the creation of this digipak you can see on the left. The design on the left, became one of our final two digipaks to completed.

For the front cover of one of our digipaks, we used a similar image from our magazine advert. We felt that this might work well with our target audience. Jessie J also took a similar approach and used her poster image as her album front cover.















The second of our digipaks, was the more popular one in our group. Research again was vital in the creation of this digipak.

On the left is the back of Bloc Party's 'A Weekend In The City' album.  We felt that it was important to emulate this style of font layout. The image used for the back of Bloc Party's album is that of scenery whereas ours is of our actor Jake with his eyes closed. We felt that this would be a good picture for us to use as our back cover because the front cover of the album has Jake looking into the camera with his eyes open.

Just behind the front cover of the album, is an image of both Jake and Emily together and apart in single joints. The single shots of both Jake and Emily together is important as it shows them with one another. Above and below the image of Emily and Jake together, are both single shots of them but apart this time. These pictures were edited in Adobe Photoshop by Sophie Jansen and placed on a cream like colour background which was our CD case. The black paint seen on this image was also created in Photoshop and was placed on this image as a design.