Final Post

Thank You and Goodbye!

Evaluation - Question 4 (James Presland)

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

Construction 

In terms of the production process, My group and I used the Canon DSLR E05 650D camera and the Nikon D7000 DSLR to film footage for the music video and to also take stills for the Digipak.

Using these two cameras allowed me to immerse in the role as a director and cinematographer. The 4k capability of the Nikon D7000 allowed me to capture high-resolution stills and film, however, unfortunately, we could not upload any video to youtube in 4k quality. I explored the construction of each frame while filming. I experimented with the use of positioning of different shots.

While we were filming and creating this camera my group and I made sure to keep in mind what our aim and intention for this project was to create a convincing and realistic media text. By experimenting and exploring different filming and editing techniques, I strengthened the cinematography and overall look of my media text by transforming my scenes into more stylish and professional scenes.

We were already fairly familiar with the Canon DSLR EOS 650D as we used this for our preliminary tasks in both year 13 and 12 and also my group's thriller trailer in year 12. We could also use this camera to gain a second angle shot along with the Nikon D7000. This also provided us with another SD card which we could use as a backup filming camera.
However, one disadvantage of using the Canon DLSR EOS 650D is that the battery life was fairly weak and needed to have a spare battery carried around with it when we went on filming sessions. This meant that we had to choose when to film specific shots instead filming rough cuts and rehearsal shots.  The other issue with this camera was the fact that the Quality of the picture was not as good as the Nikon D7000.

In terms of pre-production research and post-production editing, My group and I used a wide range of websites and software such as Blogger, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Photoshop, iMac computers, Youtube.

Blogger

Blogger is an online blog website. I used Blogger to document my research and planning of my music video and the filming of the music video. An advantage to Blogger is that we had also used it last year so the group was familiar with the layout of the site and how to tag each other in posts and who to upload posts. In addition, the embedding of videos, gifs and pictures function enables you to assist your text with examples with ease of use. A disadvantage to Blogger is that sometimes the format on the website can glitch and become disjointed, this requires you to edit and fix your post. Moreover, on occasions, Blogger may crash and all of your work may be lost.



Youtube

Youtube is a content sharing website that is free to use. My group and I used Youtube a lot during both our Year 12 Thriller trailer media project and also our Year 13 Music Video media project. An advantage to using Youtube is that we can receive feedback from people that we do not know. We also used Youtube to search for our song that we used in our music video. Youtube's message function and description space for contact information allowed us to contact Cadence Kid the creator of our song and enabled us to request if we could use his song in our project.
However, when uploading content to Youtube and viewing large content files the website can temporarily crash and take an extended period of time to load the video and buffer.




Prezi

Prezi is an internet based program that is similar to Microsoft Powerpoint. Prezi enables you to present your production blog information in a unique and interesting fashion. An advantage to Prezi is that the website based program updates and saves your work every few seconds, so unlike Blogger your work is safe even if your internet crashes or computer crashes. In addition, when the Prezi presentation is complete, the embedding function on Blogger is extremely compatible with Prezi allowing you to enter the Prezi URL and for the presentation to display itself in a user-friendly way. However, the navigation for the user while viewing the information on the slides may be unpleasant and confusing as Prezi works by zooming in and out from larger bubbles to smaller bubbles representing topics and sub-topics.




iMac Computers

The iMac computer was the computer that we used to edit and process all our footage and stills for our Digipak. One advantage of the iMacs was they were located inside the Media rooms this meant that my group and I could access. The iMac computers are very easy to use and most of our group was familiar with them already. The iMacs also have a very highly powered processing unit which came into good use when editing as the Final Cut Pro editing software was already on the iMacs. However, On rare occasions, the power could cut out causing us to lose unsaved work.



Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a photo editing software that we used in year 12 to create icons for production logos and in Year 13 to create stills for our Digipak. The software was surprisingly easy to use and created professional results. We edited the images for our magazine advert and Digipak on photoshop as it kept the 4K quality from the Nikon D7000.

Photoshop also enabled us to position and crop our still images in order to form our Digipak.







Final Cut Pro 

Final Cut Pro is the main editing software that we used to edit our music video with. Final Cut Pro was easy to use and our group was already familiar with many functions such as stabilisation, composition and cropping clips because of our experience with editing last year's Thriller trailer.

During the Preliminary 'Budget Britney' task we learnt how to silence and remove the audio from the footage used and replace and synchronise it with the audio from the actual song that we were creating a music video for, we did this in order to create synergy within the video and also because most Pop song videos have the artist lip singing. However, due to poor lip singing, we were unable to exactly synchronise both the audio and visuals, this was also heard in feedback.

While experimenting with music video conventions during our preliminary task we used a green screen and edited the footage using chroma key on Final Cut Pro. However, we found that during the storyboarding of the music video we did not need to use a green screen as it would not fit the style of music and our location for filming was accessible for us. However, we did add effects such as birds singing and the rustling of leaves as it offered a feeling of verisimilitude near to the end. We also learnt how to edit the visual to the music, this involves making jump cuts during climaxes in the music and matching the mellow and sombre mood of the music with the calm visuals.



Problems we encountered 

Problem 1: The lights we were using to shoot the actor by the river were too bright and could be seen on the actor's clothes. We found a solution to this by adding a light filter to make the light less powerful and bright. This light then acted as a backlight in our three key lighting.

Problem 2: A large part of our footage of the protagonist walking through central London was not filmed on a camera dolly so it made the footage shaky and unpleasant to view. In order to solve this we used the stabilisation tool on Final Cut Pro, this tool goes frame by frame through a selected clip of video and realigns the image to make the visuals easier to view.

Problem 3: Some of the clips placed at the start of the music video were not aligning with the music in time and this meant the whole music video and lip singing was out of time. We solved this by cropping clips into smaller sections, this lead to more flexibility in where I could place the clips and changed the flow of the video.

Evaluation - Question 3 (Group)

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Evaluation - Question 2 (James Presland)

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

Evaluation - Question 1 (James Presland)

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

Evaluation - Final Advert And Digipak Feedback

Advert

Digipak

Production - Final Magazine Advert

Production - Final Digipak

Main Case Template



Picture pullout template



How the two parts fit together

How the two parts fit together



Production - Initial Advert And Digipak Ideas

Advert

To create our advert, we used a specific scene from the music video

This scene showed the protagonist walking through a park and we thought by using Photoshop, we could merge several frames into one image. We were able to successfully do this and the feedback we received was very positive around this idea

Digipak

While creating our digipak, we had multiple variations on the final product

The initial digipak was the first image from the music video. We hoped that the audience would be able to link the video to the digipak through this image but after feedback, we found that it was messy and the font wasn't the same as the font in the video.

Our second digipak also used a darker theme, like the first variation. However the feedback showed that the audience couldn't make out the image and found that the writing was disjointed from the image.

After the second variation, we decided to go for an image with more colour, to match the genre and style of the song. This image clearly showed the protagonist, and the feedback we received was very positive. The audience liked the positioning of the protagonist but didn't like that we had edited the sky to be bluer than it actual was - they felt that the video showed the reality of London life and by Photoshopping the sky, this felt unnatural.

These variations adapted the feedback we had received by using an image that showed the grey nature of the London weather. However, the audience thought that the second image looked like we had used Photoshop to insert the protagonist.

In the end we decided to use the same image from the advert as the digipak cover

Research - Magazine Advert

Vampire Weekend - Contra

The simplicity is very effective at placing the focus on the Album cover image, the band's name and the album title. This makes the album more recognizable for the consumer who may be trying to find the album online or in a local music shop. The advert also contains everything the consumers need to know about the artist and their product.

The Advert includes everything the consumer needs to know and nothing less. The advert is very conventional and practical in  including an image of the album cover, the release date (out now), the record company’s logo and website and the website of the band.

This advert is a full page as it is advertising an whole album. However, something like an EP or a single maybe only take up a quarter of the space because of the size of the release and the predicted commercial success. The main image on the albums front cover is a attractive young woman this helps represent the asethestic of the artist as the image is striking and extremely eye catching. The colourful image of the woman uses primary colours this also serves to contrast well with the artist title and song title which also serves to highlight the artist and the song name.

NME Advert

This is an example of artists advertising tour dates. here we see 4 artists advertising.The bigger the band is the bigger their advertising space is. As we see in this advert the bands literally go in descending order of popularity which corresponds to their advertisement page size.

The band with the biggest space 'The Vaccines' tries to attract attention to their own advert by using using a red background with 'The Vaccines' written in white. This is an example of synergy as this has almost become 'The vaccines' logo and is recognized throughout the music industry. 

The use of bold fonts from the other bands also makes their adverts standout. The bands names are written in bold and in large font covering sometimes half of their space, this is to entice the reader then when the reader is engaged they will look at the tour dates. 

Research - Digipak

Digipak Research

This is a sample of my CD collection. Each of these CDs contain an interesting and exciting digipak.

Digipaks are marketing tools intended to act as an incentive for purchasing a physical copy of the music rather than streaming the music from the internet. Digipaks are only seen and received when a person owns a physical copy of the music.

Some but not all Digipaks include additional content such as:

Membership cards

Lyric sheets

Disk impression

Band info

Free image

Exclusive download links to B-sides 

Free posters or postcards.

Whatever people say I am that's what I am not

This Digipak is extremely simplistic and minimalistic. The first aspect of the Digipak which is visually clear is the dull and greyscale colours used. This was a common theme in indie bands at the time and still is now. The reason this was so popular with indie bands is because they thought that if there was a piece of art on the front then it would take away from the music or perhaps skew the consumer's opinion on the album or attitude towards the music. 

The emphasis is 100% focused on the music at hand rather than the artist's persona this is different to many mainstream artists who have a lot of focus on their persona and look. This could be interpreted as a conceptional album because of the simplistic look and the portrait photograph featured on the front panel of the digipak.

The photograph of the man smoking glamorises something which is usually looked down upon and slightly taboo, this causes controversy within the album cover. This image along with album title 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not' suggests reasons to the meaning of the album which could be a depressingly realistic depiction of the north of England. However, this is up to interpretation of the audience.The Arctic Monkeys could have just chosen that image to look cool/trendy and appeal to their teenage target audience.The first image could be 'Whatever People Say I Am' and then the image with him wiping away tears could be 'That's What I'm Not'.

This is a very successful and impactful Digipak in my opinion. A good Digipak for me should reflect the mood, themes and content of the album. This Digipak allows the consumer to think about and interpret their own meaning or to acknowledge it and move onto the music which proves it has an underlying sense of intelligence within. 

 Melodys Echo Chamber. The Genre of this music is Psychedelic. This is very clear through the bright colours present on every panel of the digipak. This digipak was especially interesting as it was set up like an old vinyl record. The cardboard sleeve to the left of the picture fitted the CD which was inside another sleeve. This was a really refreshing way of displaying and presenting a CD.

 King Krule. The Genre of this music is very mixed wiht elements of industrial music and Hip Hop. Although the constant and present theme throughout the song is the theme of urban London. The can be seen through the digipak by the use of dark and contrasting colours mixed with handwritten notes and song names.

 The names of the songs are written on the back panel of the digipak. The colour scheme is most present on the front and back panels of the digipak.

 This digipak includes an poster of an enlarged and more developed image of the front panel(album cover). This poster folds up into a sleeve opposite where the CD is positioned.

 Tame Impala. The Genre of this music is psychedelic. This is not clear through just looking at the front and back panels of the digipak. The front image is a photograph of Luxembourg gardens in Paris. My interpretation of this image is that we, the consumers are being put in the view of the person being captured in this album musically and visually. We are viewing a brightly lit park which features happy looking people enjoying the sun. This all occurs while the viewer is 'trapped' behind bars which separate the two. This could represent an 'introvert' living in his/her owns world perhaps experiencing isolation and solitude at the same time.

This image of Kevin Parker laying down in his Home Recording studio may represent his own introspection and solitude.

The effect used on the image of the Gardens creates a sense that an alternative world is created behind the mind fo the persona .

Evaluation - Final Cut Feedback

Production - Final Cut

Evaluation - Rough Cut 2 Feedback

After the feedback from the first rough cut we decided to work towards the final product a bit more and get some more audience feedback on it. We again posted the same straw poll survey onto Facebook to see the responses, here are the results...

The results from our second rough cut were a lot more positive, although less people voted in this straw poll the results moved to a more positive score as a higher percentage of people were voting for 7 which increased from 24% in the last poll to 31% in this poll. This told us that the final cut will at least be looked at positively by the audience.

Production - Rough Cut 2

Evaluation - Rough Cut 1 Feedback

The first rough cut was posted on Facebook alongside a strawpoll survey to see what the audience though of the concept shown from the video. We received 53 responses, here are the results...

From this we were able to know that are audience saw our concept from the rough cut to be just above average as 34% of results were voted 6. However the second and third most popular responses were in 7 and 8 scores which we felt were very positive and so we really needed a clearer cut to see what our audience might think of it again in a second rough cut.

Production - Rough Cut 1

Planning - Animatic Feedback

Animatic Feedback

Planning - Animatic

Animatic

Planning - Storyboard

Storyboard