Wednesday, 25 April 2012
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Evaluation Question 4
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The technologies used throughout the project allowed us to explore more creative ideas and enhanced our construction, research and presentation skills.
Evaluation Question 4 Part Two from Jamie WGSB on Vimeo.
Throughout the evaluation stages, I used similar tools to create the voice over videos and the video clips for the questions. Final cut was used so that I could make quick and easy videos by dragging in images to accompany my voice, which I had recorded using the microphone on the laptop at home. At some stages I used split screens of my final cut and images, or the final cut and the rough cut to show the similarities or changes between the tasks. I did this using the image and wireframe option in Final Cut, which allowed me to resize the videos so they fitted next to each other to create a professional split screen.
I also used a Go Animate animation to accompany my work as this was a new and interesting way of presenting the script I had already made, and using Photoshop I was able to create collages of photos. this meant I did not have to individually upload each image I wanted to use to illustrate my questions.
Evaluation Question 3
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We worked as a group to plan this question.
The first feedback came after the rough cut when our class
and friends watched the video. We took on board the things we needed to change
for our final cut. In this clip, you can see the changes we made from the rough
cut to the final cut. As the feedback told us repeatedly, the most important thing
we needed to do was get more shots of the lead singer looking into the camera
as he sings and adjust the lighting on some of the shots, so we made sure we
did this during our second filming. We also needed a more interesting and
steady opening shot, as the window we filmed was very small and did not have a
great impact. We also learned that the performance video and the shots of the
instruments were very good, as they varied and were timed well to the music.
This made people feel that the video belonged to the alternative rock genre and
it was recommended that we filmed some more similar shots of the instruments. The
feedback we received from the rough cut allowed us to identify the main
problems with the video and correct them quickly.
The feedback for our final cut came from our class feedback
session, family and teachers, and was much more positive compared to our rough
cut. After changing the lighting and some of the shots, we found our video
fitted much better with the conventions of alternative rock music videos. With
more shots of the singer looking into the camera and clearer lighting, people
commented on the professionalism of the video and its effectiveness as a
performance video. People felt that the band members were well portrayed
throughout with the use of different angles and shots, and their clothing was
appropriate for the video. Our ancillary tasks were all drawn beforehand and we asked
for the opinions of the class and our teachers.
We created our ancillary tasks after many people thought that the ideas would work well, as you can see in an example of the surveys below.
We worked as a group to plan this question.
The first feedback came after the rough cut when our class
and friends watched the video. We took on board the things we needed to change
for our final cut. In this clip, you can see the changes we made from the rough
cut to the final cut. As the feedback told us repeatedly, the most important thing
we needed to do was get more shots of the lead singer looking into the camera
as he sings and adjust the lighting on some of the shots, so we made sure we
did this during our second filming. We also needed a more interesting and
steady opening shot, as the window we filmed was very small and did not have a
great impact. We also learned that the performance video and the shots of the
instruments were very good, as they varied and were timed well to the music.
This made people feel that the video belonged to the alternative rock genre and
it was recommended that we filmed some more similar shots of the instruments. The
feedback we received from the rough cut allowed us to identify the main
problems with the video and correct them quickly.
The feedback for our final cut came from our class feedback
session, family and teachers, and was much more positive compared to our rough
cut. After changing the lighting and some of the shots, we found our video
fitted much better with the conventions of alternative rock music videos. With
more shots of the singer looking into the camera and clearer lighting, people
commented on the professionalism of the video and its effectiveness as a
performance video. People felt that the band members were well portrayed
throughout with the use of different angles and shots, and their clothing was
appropriate for the video. Our ancillary tasks were all drawn beforehand and we asked
for the opinions of the class and our teachers.We created our ancillary tasks after many people thought that the ideas would work well, as you can see in an example of the surveys below.
We interviewed a couple of our friends to see what they
thought on our entire project.
Evaluation Question 2
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I created this question myself by recording my voice onto my laptop and syncing it to the clips shown.
I created this question myself by recording my voice onto my laptop and syncing it to the clips shown.
Evaluation Question 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For our media project, we decided to make a performance video of the song 'Secrets' by One Republic, and accompany this with a digipak for their album and a magazine advertisement. Before we could begin construction of these tasks, we needed to undertake research into the forms and conventions of music videos in general, and specifically music videos from the alternative rock genre, as our song was part of this genre. I looked into videos such as 'It's Raining Men' by Geri Halliwell, and then music videos by Kasabian and The Red Hot Chili Peppers to understand the forms and conventions typical of our genre. Ultimately, the video and ancillary task had to act as a promotional vehicle for the band as a whole.
The first aspect that became apparent when analysing videos from the rock and alternative genre was that nearly every video was entirely performance based or had an element of performance within it. There is a strong focus on the instruments used to create the music in the rock genre, so the music videos have a large amount of shots, particularly close ups of instruments, to show the dexterity of the band members and drive the editing of the video itself. Cuts to the drum beats were particularly common. We decided that to create a music video typical of this genre, we had to make a performance video and comply with the typical conventions of rock videos.We did contemplate making a narrative side to our video, however, the rough cut turned out to be a success as an entirely performance based video, so we stuck to this idea.
One of the most typical conventions of the rock/alternative genre was to have emphasis on the lead singer and lots of shots with the lead singer looking directly into the camera. This was emphasised when we recieved our feedback for the rough cut, when the majority of people stated that there needed to be more shots of the lead singer doing this. This type of shot creates a connection between the audience and the people in the video they are watching. Typically, the person in a band that the audience are most likely to remember is the lead singer, so we needed to portray him in as many ways possible. We utilised a range of shots, for example medium close ups of him looking directly into the camera, a long shot of him standing at the microphone, and an extreme close up as he sang the chorus. These types of shot were similarly portrayed in the videos by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kasabian and the Stereophonics.
The other band members were also shown, however none of them looked directly into the camera. We filmed close ups of their faces and long shots of them playing the instruments in order to establish them as well as the singer, although we kept the emphasis on the lead singer throughout the video. In the majority of videos we watched, the other band members are shown in the video to indicate who plays which instument and show their skills. In the videos, they are seen concentrating on the music rather than building a connection with the audience.
As we found when watching the music videos on YouTube, there was a high emphasis on the instruments within the video. The instruments that can be heard and seen in a music video can drive the editing and affect the use of types of transitions and cuts. A small video can be seen below showing how the different instruments and pace of music affected our editing.
The close ups of the instruments were vital when making our video as the video needed to show that that band members could play the song well and also depict to the audience the sounds that they were hearing. The instruments we had in our music video were the cello, violin, drums and guitar, all of which were vital when illustrating the music in different parts of the song. These types of shots were also seen in many other videos that we watched. As the cello was not a typical intrument of our genre, we had to look into other videos to see the sorts of shots we could use for the cello.
A typical place for performance videos to be filmed were open spaces, rehearsal areas and stages. The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Kasabian both used open spaces for their videos, whereas Oasis used a rooftop to stage their video. The setting of a performance video is not the most important part of the video, as the setting should not detract from the performance of the song, however the lighting had to be clear so that the band were always shown clearly in the video. To keep the emphasis on the band, a plain area is normally used to stage the band. With this in mind, and the theme of religion and confession stemming from our song title 'Secrets', we chose to use a church to set our video in as this had a large area for the band to set up and also tied in well with our theme.
The items of clothing that the artist is wearing in a music video can depend on the song and whether the video is a performance or narrative. What an artist wears can also determine their iconography, particularly with artists such as Lady Gaga, who has become known for her obscure outfits and clothes. We did not use a logo to promote our brand, but chose a smart/casual style of clothing for our band. We chose to do this because of the type of song we chose, which has a slow build up particularly with the cello, but also has a fast paced chorus. The formal type of clothing was fitting as we were going to be shooting the video in the church, and also shows the audience a level of sophistication about the band.
Some music videos use many visual effects to emphasise aspects of the music. Within the Red Hot Chili Peppers video, they use a slow motion effect to emphasise the guitar solo towards the end of the song. Within our video, we used effects in transitions to reflect changes in pace of the song. The lightbulb transition and additive dissolves were used to show how the pace of the song slowed down at the end of the chorus.the fade transition was also used in the beginning of the song as it starts out slow, and the fade out was also used at the end of the video to signify the end of the music video.
Throughout our video, we had to include camera movement as this was typical of our genre. Many other videos use camera movement to accompany the actions and movements of a lead singer, and in our video we needed to include camera movement to create an authentic, dynamic feel to our performance video. During the chorus, quicker movements of the camera are used to reflect the change of pace in the song and the speed at which the lead singer is singing. At the opening of the video, pans and slow camera movement are used to accompany the slow pace of the cello music.
One of the final conventions we had to stick to was including a logo and song information in the video. We had chosen for our video to appear on MTV Rocks as this featured many similar bands. An MTV Rocks logo was included in the video on the top left corner and the song information was keyframed to fade onto the screen at the beginning of the song.
When creating our ancillary tasks, the influence of existing products was very important. We looked at many existing digipaks before creating our own, in order to understand the typical things we needed to include such as barcodes, copyright information, a band website and labels. We also needed to look into albums from our genre of music to get an understanding of their layout and colour schemes.
We found that the images on the front cover of a digipak could be abstract art as we saw with the Muse cover, or could be an image of the band. We thought that the best way to link our three products would be to have the band members on the cover of the digipak and also include them on the advert. We saw that the majority of album covers with the band on the front had a layered image, with the lead singer at the front looking out at the viewer and the other members behind. We used this style of image on our digipak to show the importance of the singer, create a connection to the audience and show the band together.
From the digipaks we looked at the colour scheme and style remained the same throughout the album, with either patterns or colours being repeated across all four panels. We used a black and white colour scheme and incorporated the doves idea as a pattern that we could repeat across the panels of our digipak. Looking at the Eminem album and the U2 album, a different image of the artist appeared on the inside cover of the digipak, so we also included an image. We desaturated the background to keep to the black and white theme but left the band members highlighted as they were on the front cover.
The font we chose for the digipak was used across the whole of the album, but we changed the size of the writing depending on the importance of the information. We saw a similar style used on the American Idiot album by Green Day which changed the size and colour of writing to direct the readers attention. We did this by making the band name larger than the album name, making the track list the largest piece of writing on the back cover and also making the copyright information very small.
When creating the magazine advert, we had to link the advert to the other products we had created and also look at the layouts of current adverts. The main image on a magazine advert was the lead singer or band, an this allowed the audience to recognise the band. We used this on both our adverts, firstly with the whole band and secondly with the large image of the lead singer.
As with the digipak, we used the same font across the advert and resized/recoloured text to attract the audiences attention. as we had seen in the Ed Sheeran advert and the Elton John advert the artist name, album name and release date were all the largest text on the page to show importance, so we used this convention on our adverts. We also adopted a simple back and white colour scheme again to link the tasks and keep the emphasis on the image of the band.
Lastly the labels and smallprint were also featured on the adverts as we had seen examples of adverts which included record labels and a HMV logo to indicate where the album was available to buy.
For our media project, we decided to make a performance video of the song 'Secrets' by One Republic, and accompany this with a digipak for their album and a magazine advertisement. Before we could begin construction of these tasks, we needed to undertake research into the forms and conventions of music videos in general, and specifically music videos from the alternative rock genre, as our song was part of this genre. I looked into videos such as 'It's Raining Men' by Geri Halliwell, and then music videos by Kasabian and The Red Hot Chili Peppers to understand the forms and conventions typical of our genre. Ultimately, the video and ancillary task had to act as a promotional vehicle for the band as a whole.
The first aspect that became apparent when analysing videos from the rock and alternative genre was that nearly every video was entirely performance based or had an element of performance within it. There is a strong focus on the instruments used to create the music in the rock genre, so the music videos have a large amount of shots, particularly close ups of instruments, to show the dexterity of the band members and drive the editing of the video itself. Cuts to the drum beats were particularly common. We decided that to create a music video typical of this genre, we had to make a performance video and comply with the typical conventions of rock videos.We did contemplate making a narrative side to our video, however, the rough cut turned out to be a success as an entirely performance based video, so we stuck to this idea.
One of the most typical conventions of the rock/alternative genre was to have emphasis on the lead singer and lots of shots with the lead singer looking directly into the camera. This was emphasised when we recieved our feedback for the rough cut, when the majority of people stated that there needed to be more shots of the lead singer doing this. This type of shot creates a connection between the audience and the people in the video they are watching. Typically, the person in a band that the audience are most likely to remember is the lead singer, so we needed to portray him in as many ways possible. We utilised a range of shots, for example medium close ups of him looking directly into the camera, a long shot of him standing at the microphone, and an extreme close up as he sang the chorus. These types of shot were similarly portrayed in the videos by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kasabian and the Stereophonics.
The other band members were also shown, however none of them looked directly into the camera. We filmed close ups of their faces and long shots of them playing the instruments in order to establish them as well as the singer, although we kept the emphasis on the lead singer throughout the video. In the majority of videos we watched, the other band members are shown in the video to indicate who plays which instument and show their skills. In the videos, they are seen concentrating on the music rather than building a connection with the audience.As we found when watching the music videos on YouTube, there was a high emphasis on the instruments within the video. The instruments that can be heard and seen in a music video can drive the editing and affect the use of types of transitions and cuts. A small video can be seen below showing how the different instruments and pace of music affected our editing.
The close ups of the instruments were vital when making our video as the video needed to show that that band members could play the song well and also depict to the audience the sounds that they were hearing. The instruments we had in our music video were the cello, violin, drums and guitar, all of which were vital when illustrating the music in different parts of the song. These types of shots were also seen in many other videos that we watched. As the cello was not a typical intrument of our genre, we had to look into other videos to see the sorts of shots we could use for the cello. 
A typical place for performance videos to be filmed were open spaces, rehearsal areas and stages. The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Kasabian both used open spaces for their videos, whereas Oasis used a rooftop to stage their video. The setting of a performance video is not the most important part of the video, as the setting should not detract from the performance of the song, however the lighting had to be clear so that the band were always shown clearly in the video. To keep the emphasis on the band, a plain area is normally used to stage the band. With this in mind, and the theme of religion and confession stemming from our song title 'Secrets', we chose to use a church to set our video in as this had a large area for the band to set up and also tied in well with our theme.
The items of clothing that the artist is wearing in a music video can depend on the song and whether the video is a performance or narrative. What an artist wears can also determine their iconography, particularly with artists such as Lady Gaga, who has become known for her obscure outfits and clothes. We did not use a logo to promote our brand, but chose a smart/casual style of clothing for our band. We chose to do this because of the type of song we chose, which has a slow build up particularly with the cello, but also has a fast paced chorus. The formal type of clothing was fitting as we were going to be shooting the video in the church, and also shows the audience a level of sophistication about the band. 
Some music videos use many visual effects to emphasise aspects of the music. Within the Red Hot Chili Peppers video, they use a slow motion effect to emphasise the guitar solo towards the end of the song. Within our video, we used effects in transitions to reflect changes in pace of the song. The lightbulb transition and additive dissolves were used to show how the pace of the song slowed down at the end of the chorus.the fade transition was also used in the beginning of the song as it starts out slow, and the fade out was also used at the end of the video to signify the end of the music video.Throughout our video, we had to include camera movement as this was typical of our genre. Many other videos use camera movement to accompany the actions and movements of a lead singer, and in our video we needed to include camera movement to create an authentic, dynamic feel to our performance video. During the chorus, quicker movements of the camera are used to reflect the change of pace in the song and the speed at which the lead singer is singing. At the opening of the video, pans and slow camera movement are used to accompany the slow pace of the cello music.
When creating our ancillary tasks, the influence of existing products was very important. We looked at many existing digipaks before creating our own, in order to understand the typical things we needed to include such as barcodes, copyright information, a band website and labels. We also needed to look into albums from our genre of music to get an understanding of their layout and colour schemes.
We found that the images on the front cover of a digipak could be abstract art as we saw with the Muse cover, or could be an image of the band. We thought that the best way to link our three products would be to have the band members on the cover of the digipak and also include them on the advert. We saw that the majority of album covers with the band on the front had a layered image, with the lead singer at the front looking out at the viewer and the other members behind. We used this style of image on our digipak to show the importance of the singer, create a connection to the audience and show the band together. 
From the digipaks we looked at the colour scheme and style remained the same throughout the album, with either patterns or colours being repeated across all four panels. We used a black and white colour scheme and incorporated the doves idea as a pattern that we could repeat across the panels of our digipak. Looking at the Eminem album and the U2 album, a different image of the artist appeared on the inside cover of the digipak, so we also included an image. We desaturated the background to keep to the black and white theme but left the band members highlighted as they were on the front cover.The font we chose for the digipak was used across the whole of the album, but we changed the size of the writing depending on the importance of the information. We saw a similar style used on the American Idiot album by Green Day which changed the size and colour of writing to direct the readers attention. We did this by making the band name larger than the album name, making the track list the largest piece of writing on the back cover and also making the copyright information very small.
When creating the magazine advert, we had to link the advert to the other products we had created and also look at the layouts of current adverts. The main image on a magazine advert was the lead singer or band, an this allowed the audience to recognise the band. We used this on both our adverts, firstly with the whole band and secondly with the large image of the lead singer.As with the digipak, we used the same font across the advert and resized/recoloured text to attract the audiences attention. as we had seen in the Ed Sheeran advert and the Elton John advert the artist name, album name and release date were all the largest text on the page to show importance, so we used this convention on our adverts. We also adopted a simple back and white colour scheme again to link the tasks and keep the emphasis on the image of the band.
Lastly the labels and smallprint were also featured on the adverts as we had seen examples of adverts which included record labels and a HMV logo to indicate where the album was available to buy. Saturday, 10 March 2012
Magazine Adverts and Digipak Comparison
Monday, 5 March 2012
Final Magazine Adverts
These are the final magazines we created based on our initial ideas. Below is an example of the surveys I conducted to get some feedback on the magazines and their combination with the digipak. To view more of the surveys I took, click here.
Sunday, 4 March 2012
Magazine Advert Research and Planning
Whilst working on the digipak, we began to plan the magazine advertisement that was the remaining ancillary task. It is important to link all three of our products so by planning the digipak and advert together we could achieve this. First we looked at some current adverts found in some music magazines. We chose to look at the magazines that featured in Q magazine and how these were laid out following the post about our target audience, which you can see here.
For my first idea, I thought about using a similar colour scheme to this advert and a similar layout, with an image of the band in the centre and the information above and below this. The key things in the image are written in the largest font.
For the second idea I took more ideas from the Bob Dylan advert as this featured an image of a single person like I was using. I thought this idea could work if I similarly featured a picture of the album on the advert, as this would establish the band as a whole despite the lead singer being the only one to feature on the advert. I used a similar structure to this advert when designing my own and also highlighted some other features of the advert I could include.
The aspects that also need to be included are the website name so that people interested can go to the band's website and the HMV logo which can show where to buy the album from.
For both our digipak and advert, we needed the logo's of the companies associated with One Republic to feature on the products. After some research, we found that One Republic's record labels were Mosley Music Group and Interscope Records, both of which are owned by Universal Music Group. We found the logo's of these and featured them on our advert and digipak.
After looking at these adverts, I began to plan what our magazine advert could look like after taking inspiration from these adverts and narrowing down the images I could use. Based on some of the pictures from our recording and the digipak ideas, I came up with these ideas:
The majority of magazine advertisements are simple and are designed to draw attention to key things such as who the album artist is, when it will be released and the reviews of the album. They commonly feature a large image of either the band or singer to establish their identity. The advert for the album by Elton John and Leon Russell is an example of the simple layout and colour scheme used in adverts and I have circled parts of the image that will need to be included on our advert.
For my first idea, I thought about using a similar colour scheme to this advert and a similar layout, with an image of the band in the centre and the information above and below this. The key things in the image are written in the largest font. 
The aspects that also need to be included are the website name so that people interested can go to the band's website and the HMV logo which can show where to buy the album from. 
For both our digipak and advert, we needed the logo's of the companies associated with One Republic to feature on the products. After some research, we found that One Republic's record labels were Mosley Music Group and Interscope Records, both of which are owned by Universal Music Group. We found the logo's of these and featured them on our advert and digipak.Saturday, 3 March 2012
Friday, 2 March 2012
Thursday, 1 March 2012
Further Digipak Research and Ideas
These are some small designs that we could possibly use for our digipak. We took the idea of using different colours for 'One Republic' and 'Letting Go' from existing One Republic digipaks and also thought the tiled effect used in the top right hand corner could be used as a pattern on the back cover and inside cover, as it resembles a stained glass window.
Saturday, 25 February 2012
Final Cut Feedback
To get feedback for our final cut, the whole year group watched our video and made notes on it, and we posted the video to social networking sites to see what our friends thought. They told us what aspects they liked and also things that could have been done better.
Overall, the feedback from our final cut was very positive. People mainly commented on the range of camera angles and shots we used to portray the band. Some comments included:
Overall, the feedback from our final cut was very positive. People mainly commented on the range of camera angles and shots we used to portray the band. Some comments included:
- Edited well to the beat and good lip syncing
- Good close ups and shots of the instruments
- Good eye contact from lead singer
- Effective transitions
- Good use of extreme close up on the lips
- Good variety of shots of all band members
- Good camera movement
Friday, 24 February 2012
Final Cut
This is the final cut of our music video after making improvements after feedback. The main changes included better lighting on the singer, shots with the singer looking directly into the camera more, and more varied shots of the instruments. We also managed to incorporate a music station logo and a text box at the beginning and end of the video stating the song name and artist.
Monday, 20 February 2012
Final Cut Construction
After we had filmed again following the feedback from our
rough cut, we had to edit our rough cut and insert the new shots we had taken.
Based on the rough cut feedback, we took more shots with better lighting, more
shots of the lead singer looking into the camera, a new opening to the video, an
extreme close up of the singer’s lips, and more energetic shots during the
chorus. 
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