Final Video

Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product?
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
4.  How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

1. 

My media products use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products. Forms and conventions are common things you see that set that genre apart from others.  The front cover for the album uses and challenges conventions of a soft/pop rock genre by having all the traditional artists image, name and album name.  These are found on all front covers as it gives you the most important information about the album, which is the artists name and album name. An image of the artist are found more on pop album covers than rock as they tend to be fairly plain and the name of the band tends to sell the album rather than a picture of them. However, since my song fits into both the pop and rock genre so I added conventions of both genres. I challenged conventions with the image as they tend to be colourful rather than black and white. However I thought the black and white image better reflected the song chosen, which is a sad melancholy song. Another way that I had challenged conventions was by placing the text vertically on the left hand side. This challenges convention as the text tends to be located in either the middle of the cover or at the top with the text being horizontal. I challenged this convention as I thought it would look a lot better that way and it is something that is not seen very much. 

My back cover uses and challenges forms and conventions as it had the traditional song titles, bar code, record label logo and copyright information. The most important thing on the back cover should be the song titles as this tell the buyers what song are on the album. The barcode is needed so when you buy the album it can be scanned and then you will be charged the correct price. The copyright information is placed so tell the buyer than the sharing of the songs on the internet is illegal and that they could be prosecuted if they don’t follow it. Record company logo is not so important and not on all back covers, but I added it to make the cover look more professional. The way I challenged forms and conventions was by putting an image of the artist in the back cover. Images are not normally found in the back cover as, especially an image from the actual music video. However, I challenged this convention as I felt it would link the music video and album covers together.

I used and challenged forms and conventions for the print advert. I used conventions by having the HMV logo located on the bottom left corner of the advert. This is very traditional and the logo is always found in the same place. I also put the ratings of the album from a reputable music magazine. This helps the album to sell as people will think it is worth a buy as it has been KERRANG!. I also put the picture of the front cover of my album on the advert as this is what I am promoting and this is what people are going to buy. I added the record company logo to make it look more professional but this doesn’t matter too much. The text fits in with convention as it is located at the top of the advert rather than on the left side like my front cover. The way I challenged forms and conventions was by placing an image from the actual music video. The advert normally has an image that is normally taken from a photo shoot. However, I challenged this as I felt the image works perfectly with the advert and it is a good way to promote the album.

The music video uses and challenges forms and conventions of a pop or rock genre. It uses conventions by having the song, artist and album name come up at the start and end of the music video. This is found in every music video this information is very important. It follows the pop genre conventions by having loads of transitions between shots and also having a lot of different shots. It challenged rock conventions as they tend to be a performance music video. However, my music video is a narrative music video and fits in more with the pop genre. I did this because performance music videos are normally of a band playing at a concert, but my song does not have a band in it so it made more sense to make a narrative video.  You could easily relate the lyrics to video.

2.

The combination of the main product and ancillary texts are very effective because they are both linked together as all the images used in my print artefacts are taken from the timeline from my final product. My print advert is very effective in promoting the album because I have used an image from my timeline that perfectly reflects the album. The album is very sad and melancholy and image is used for my print artefact is of the artist walking nowhere with his back turned. This image is in black and white which fits in with the theme as black and white represents sadness. The colour of the font used stands out to the background and would easily attract the attention of people. The five stars also stand out in red and with the KERRANG! Logo located above would tell people it has been given good rating from a reputable magazine. A image of the front cover of the album is found on the advert as this is what the advert is promoting and that is what people are going to buy. The advert could easily be found in magazine and billboards to attract a larger audience and improve the success rate of the album.

The front cover is very simple with another black and white image of the artists face. I used the same font and colour for the text, but this time the txt is found on the left hand side facing sideward’s. I feel the front cover is effective because of the way the text is as it is different and not an average CD cover. Also the artists face is on the front screen as the main reason people buy albums is because of the artist and by putting an image of the artist on the front, I am increasing the success rate of the album. 

The back cover is probably the least effective of my print artefacts and main product as I feel I could do a lot better with it. However, it does have the most important information on it which is the song titles. That is the main point of a back cover as it tells you extra information. Whereas the front cover is what sells the album. The back cover does have all the conventional things you would see in a back cover except for the image. The way I could make the back cover more effective would be by using an image without anyone in it. The image should be sad and depressing, that would fit in with the theme of the album rather than an image of the artist singing in snow. 

The main product is quite effective in my opinion as is uses and challenges forms and conventions and I can see people liking it if they saw it on a music channel. The video fits in perfectly with the song and all the editing and lip syncing is done to a high standard. The only downside I have with the music video is that i wish i could have a bit more shots in it. However, the extra shots that I had spare would not fit in with the song and as a result they were not used.

3.

Audience feedback is essential for the success of my print artefacts and main production as is gives me an insight of the views of the audience on my work.  The feedback that I get will allow me to tweak or change anything that they are not happy with, or think that can be better. Feedback will give me the chance to make my final production and print artefacts the best it possibly can and would increase my overall marks.  I have taken on board what the audience have said and tried to change things as much as possible to improve my overall product.

 

Firstly, the feedback that I had gotten for my album cover was that the text was on the wrong side as it was located on the right side of the cover. This is the side in which the CD case will open. The text was put on that side was because of the fact that there was free space on that side and if I had put the text on the left hand side, it would go over the artists face.

Fixing this problem was simple as all I had to do was the flip the background image and move the text to the other side. Another thing that was said in the feedback was that I should not have the record company logo on the front cover, as the front cover is very simple. They told me that the record company logo is normally found on the back cover.

The feedback that I had gotten for the back cover was that there was too much dead space in the picture. Due to the image image being very big I had to spread things out to clear up the space available. Another thing was that they said that the background image was a bit blurry. However, there was nothing I could do about this as the still image had been taken my my timeline and converted into a jpeg. I tried to save the image into different formats to see if that would improve the quality of the picture. But it did not and I had to still with it. Saying that the picture  is not that blurry and does not affect the overall image that much.  To fix the problem of the large amounts of dead space, I cropped the image where I cut out around 40% from the right. I then rearranged all the text and images and the overall result was a lot better than the original back cover.

The feedback that I had gotten for my print advert was very good as everyone seemed to like it. The said that the font stands out in the black and white image. The only thing they said was that I could add a bit more things to it like how much starts it got and from whom. They also told me to put an image of my album cover on the advert to show people how the cover looks when they go to buy it in the shops. I cannot show you how the advert looked previously as I had already implemented the changes to it.

The feedback that I had gotten for my final production was that there weren’t enough shots in the production. However I could not fix this because I could not get a hold of the actor. Another thing they said was that there were too many transitions that reduced the fluency of the production. I listened to them and removed some of the transitions.  Overall the audience said that my video and song complemented each other and the overall production worked really well.

4.

Planning/Research

To start my coursework off I had to create a blogspot page on blogger.com to which I would have to keep updating as the weeks went on. Once I created my blog page I then chose a template for the design of my blog. The good ting about blogger.com is that it allowed me to link my AS blog with my A2 blog. Now the time started for me to put my work on my blog and this was done by uploading notes in new posts. Every time we analysed any media texts in class, we were told to upload all the notes onto our blog. We analyse three different types of media texts in class, which were a documentary, music video and a short film. We were then told to upload analyse our own media texts in our own time and upload it to our blogs. For each media text that I analysed I embedded a video of the media text from either Youtube or Vimeo. To embed the videos I had to copy the embed code from the site and copy it into the Edit HTML section on the post. For the audience to better understand my posts I uploaded Jpeg images of the shots that I have analysed. To do this I print screened the shot that I wanted and copied it to word. Next I cropped the image and then copied it to paint. There I saved the image as a Jpeg and then uploaded it the image on my posts through the insert image button. I then paced the image in a suitable area, which is next to the font. I also changed the size of the image on my post through the button underneath the image that appears when you click on it. This allows you to change the size from small to extra large and lest you pace the image on either the left, centre of right.

Constructions: Main task

On the construction of my main production I used a mini dv camera in which I filmed all my footage on a mini dv tape. After filming a shot the camera allowed you to rewind the tape to see what was reordered. This was very handy as if the shot was not very good, then you could record the scene again and again till you get it right. Once I had got all the footage that I needed, I created a new production on Final Cut Pro in which I uploaded all my footage. The way I uploaded my footage was by inserting the mini dv tape inside a deck which allowed me to see all my footage on Final Cut Pro. Next I used the log and capture button to capture all my footage. Before I capture my footage I created a name for the particular shot so that I could easily locate the shot when it comes to constructing my final production. When it came to constructing my music video I was able to take appropriate lengths from my footage and put it on my timeline. Between scenes I put transitions in place to allow two scenes to join together and allowed for more fluency in my video. I mostly used fade in fade out and dissolve transitions as they are simple transitions and go well with the video. Effects that I used was that I made some of the scenes black and white because the song is very slow and melancholy and it is something you would expect to see in them types of music videos. To get the song onto Final Cut Pro I downloaded the song and copied it to a memory stick, then transferred the song to Final Cut Pro.  

Print Artefacts

The image used for my final print artefacts was taken from the timeline from my production. I learned how to make a freeze frame of a particular shot. Then I saved it as a still image and then opened it with PhotoShop. Once I got the image as my background I used the Synchro LET font for all my artefacts. The font is of a light green colour as it stands out from the background. Furthermore, I had to create my own record company logo as they didn’t have one. I did this by using auto tools In PhotoShop to create three arrows and then merged them together. Barcode, HMV logo and Kerrang logo were copied from Google images and pasted on my artefacts. For my draft print artefacts I copied pictures of Gary Jules from the internet and pasted it in PhotoShop.

Evaluation

I drafted a 2000 word evaluation on word, which I then copied and pasted into a new post on my blog page. All the above are the ways that i used media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages. My skills have improved from the first year to the second and i am more comfortable with using the technologies to aid me in my media production.