Evaluation:

Unfortunately I was unable to upload my slideshow presentation using slideshare which I used for previous presentations, so I have decided to print screen the stills of each slide instead.

Evaluation:

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

I used many different media technologies to help me arrive at making my three different products, some were used during the research stages; questionnaires and audience feedback were used alongside online media programmes such as facebook, wordle and wallwisher. This type of technology helped me to gain a better understanding of what people wished to see in a music video and in the ancillary products which go alongside it. I used these programmes to upload images and also my video to receive such comments and luckily it worked, helping me with my research and construction. I used my Apple Iphone to take photographs for my ancillary tasks and also used it to play music whilst my actor was lip singing in time with it in my video. This also acted as a memory stick as I stored a lot of my work on it whilst working on editing my video and transferring information onto my blog. I was lucky enough to have access to an Apple Mac at school which had the editing programme ‘Final Cut Pro’ on it, this editing software is really effective and I took full advantage of this when constructing my video. I used the different effects which are included with it, such as a wide range of transitions, editing of the speed/ colour of shot as well as many other more complex effects. Although I only experimented with a few of these effects, I believe and judging from some of my audience feedback, that the ones I did use looked professional and tied all of my clips together nicely.  This programme also allowed me to easily transfer my music (the cover version) so that I could cut the clips whilst listening to the music, making editing a lot easier.

Production:

To film my music video, I used a new video camera, which had a memory card, instead of a tape, preventing me from having to change films. However, this did cause a few problems as only the new Apple Macs at school were compatible with this type of camera and so I had to wait until these specific computers were free until I could upload my video and start to edit it. I also used a tripod which when fixed to the camera made my filming a lot smoother, although there are a few jolts in my final footage, the tripod kept these at a minimum and as there was even a built in spirit level, which ensured that my shots would be straight.  When making my ancillary products, as previously mentioned I used my Iphone to take photographs which I then uploaded and edited using a programme called ‘Adobe Photoshop Elements 7’. This programme was great, it allowed me to manipulate my photographs and I edited the lighting effects to make the image more atmospheric and used different filters to subtly change the overall texture of the image. As I learnt from my audience research, I could have used this to make the writing slightly lighter and bigger and I would definitely adhere to this if i were to make it again.

Research and Planning:

In my research and planning I used a programme called ‘slideshare’ to make slideshows which can be accessed via blogger.com. This was an interesting way of presenting ideas and really helped me, especially when comparing existing products. I also used this for part of my evaluation, as once again I find it really useful when comparing items.

Perhaps one of the most important media technologies I used was ‘YouTube’ which I used to show the existing videos I was researching, as well as when uploading my own videos (both for my evaluation and as my finished piece). I uploaded my footage/searched for exiting videos on ‘YouTube’ and then transferred it onto blogger so that people reading my blog can see what I am talking about, look at my work.

I also used Windows Vista, in particular, Microsoft word, excel and PowerPoint to help me with my blog work, making charts from data gathered and forming slideshows to be transferred onto slideshare.

One other problem I did encounter was that as many programmes are filtered on our school internet, for quite a long period of time, my classmates and I were unable to access blogger.com at school so we had to write up our posts on word documents and then post them at a later date.

Evaluation:

What have you learned from your audience feedback? 

I used audience feedback throughout the production process of my products. I used questionnaires as well as programmes such as ‘facebook ‘and ‘wallwisher’ to help me collect people’s opinions of my ideas as well as their opinions of my final products.

To begin with I used a simple questionnaire, using the information to learn more about the audience I would be targeting in particular. The people I asked all were relatively young, aged 25 and under. I therefore set about creating products which would appeal to them, using their comments as guidelines as what would be needed. This form of audience feedback also helped me to decide on which genre of music to use, a huge percentage of the people I asked in this initial questionnaire proved Pop and Rock genres to be the most popular, so I decided to choose a band which has dabbled in both of these genres at some point. My first choice was ‘The Script’. I really like this band as I feel that their music has a lot of depth as the lyrics have meaning, and emotion is put behind each word. After I had decided to go down this route, I conducted another questionnaire, this time to gain knowledge about my target audiences favourite types of CD covers, to help me prepare for designing and ultimately making my digi pak. The results showed that the covers which were the most popular followed certain conventions, the colours and effects resembled the tone of the music and it became apparent that the main image would be a big part of the CD covers overall success. I used this information to help me when making decisions about my own products; what to include and why it should be there.

Another tool I used was the programme ‘wordle’ which helps to make comments a bit more aesthetically pleasing which is helpful when looking at results. I used this tool to comprise some of the comments my target market made about existing products, giving me a clear idea of what sort of things proved popular; ‘Simplistic’, ‘peaceful’ and ‘reflections’ were words which stood out to me and I incorporated these ideas into my ancillary tasks. After these results I took some photographs and once again relied on a questionnaire to help me decide on which one to use. The results were clear and helped me to decide on which three pictures to make some initial designs around. I then used the programme ‘Wallwisher’ to choose between these. However this programme was not particularly successful as only two people commented on my designs. I used their ideas and went on to design my final CD cover around all of my audience feedback. I went through the same process when designing my magazine advert, using information and opinions gained from questionnaires.

Finally, I used ‘facebook’ to upload all of my final products, and collected a few comments from people. Largely, the people who watched my video felt that the lip synching was a bit out of time, and some of the footage of the motorways was obviously on repeat loop. I completely agree with these comments and think that they are fair and justified and if I were to re-film I would try and improve on these points. However, I was really pleased with the comments as a whole as everyone I asked said that they thought that the music went really well with the images shown on screen and felt that the video flowed well. This was what I was hoping to achieve and through the feedback I gained I can see that my video was successful and did follow many conventions seen in existing products. I also asked my friend’s mother to upload it on her facebook, and some of her friends and work colleagues commented on it. I wished to include this as I felt it was important to see how other people from a different audience would view it. I am happy to say that all of these comments were positive and kind although realistically it may have been slightly biased as the film starred the woman’s son! I also used ‘facebook’ to learn about people’s opinions of my ancillary products. Again the comments were generally positive, although most people thought that the title of the album on both my CD cover and advert could have been slightly lighter and bigger so that it showed up against the background better.

Overall I have learnt a lot from audience feedback, it has helped me to gain a better understanding about the conventions of such media products, has helped me to identify my target market as well as ultimately shaping how all of my texts have turned out. The feedback has also shown me how I could improve my products.

Evaluation:

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

My video responses regarding each of the products: my video, digi pak and magazine advert. I apologise for the length, I tend to talk quite a lot and quite slowly!



My final music video - A higher quality video to come

Audience Feedback: Once again I uploaded my product onto facebook and asked my friends to comment on it, givivng me their honest views on my finished piece. The comments I received are as follows:

Michael Alcock ( the man playing the 'artist' in my video) also showed his mother, who also uploaded it onto her facebook account, here are some of the comments she received which gives me the opinions of a different age group entirely:

Some of the comments made above are a little misguided as they do not appear to realise that it is not Michael singing. However, I did mention that he is singing along to a cover version of 'The Scripts' song.

Although some of the people who commented on my video may have been biased ( Michael, Ellen and Michael's mum) all of the comments I recieved were pretty similar. Overall I am really pleased with the feedback from both groups of people, as on a whole it has been positive and I have been given some constructive criticism which I will talk about in more detail in my evaluation.

Audience Feedback - Magazine advert

Audience Feedback - CD cover (digi pak)

My Final Magazine Advert

CD advert design

After researching existing CD adverts I can see that there is a clear link between them and the front cover of the CD they are promoting. This is obviously important as the audience will need to know how the CD looks if they are going to be able to find it and ultimately purchase it.

I have decided to conform to this convention and will use the same image (the guitar propped against a tree) as the main image in my advert. I will also use the same font style as used on my cover as I want there to be continuity between my products. I like the 'Marina And The Diamonds' advert as it is simple, yet eye catching. I am going to try and base my advert on this and complete it in a similar style.

The plan:

As you can see it is really similar to my CD front cover, however it does include more information about the album.

CD adverts in magazines

The second ancillary task is to create an advert for the CD which would be featured in various different magazines. I realised that the first thing to do was to look at such existing adverts and analyse them.

 

After looking at these examples, it is clear to me that all of the adverts have clear links with the front of the CD covers, this is probably as the two need to be associated with one another and it needs to be clear what it is the advert is actually advertising. I will need to take this into consideration when making my magazine article, although it does not to be identical to my CD cover, it needs to have clear similarities. I also realised that on most of the adverts I looked at, a website is provided for people to look at. Other tracks included on the CD are mentioned, attracting peoples attention and possibly encouraging them to buy the product.. I will also include these features on my advert as I want it to include as many conventional advertising techniques as possible.

Final CD cover

Here is my final digi pack, I have placed the images over templates to show the dimensions:

Final Digi pak plan

These are all rough ideas and I plan to edit the colours and textures by experimenting with photoshop elements, I will also need to edit the images to the correct size so they fit. Below is a template of the front and back cover dimesions:

Which of my CD cover designs do you think is best? by Saskia

Which of my CD cover designs do you think is best? by Saskia

Click on the link to enter 'wallwisher'. :)

My Music Video

Will compare stills from my video to those featured in existing music videos from the same genre.

Editing

I have now finished editing my music video which did not take as long as I envisioned. After uploading my footage onto an Apple Mac, I imported my footage onto final cut pro, an editing programme. I then uploaded the cover of the music 'For the First Time' using my iphone to transfer it onto the computer. After this too was imported onto final cut pro I started to skim through my footage whilst also referring to my storyboard. I soon realised that although I thought I had got a lot of footage to choose from, when these were cut down, there was not quite so much that I could use. After playing around with the different effects you can achieve on final cut, I discovered that I could change the speed of my shots fairly easily. Therefore I have included some sped up footage (the motorway scenes turned out quite well as I sped the shots up by 500%) as well as some slowed down shots. This helped make the shots fit in with the song and I think that the video flows quite nicely. I did have a few problems with the lip synching as I found it very difficult to match up the music with Michaels moving mouth! To make my video interesting I changed some of the shots into black and white. These shots showed the present day and I hoped that changing them to black and white would illustrate to the audience Michaels feelings of despair and his bleak reality which contrasts with the happy colourful memories he has with Ellen (black has connotations of loneliness and misery). This also fits in with some of the conventions of existing music videos which I researched prior to making my video. I also added some transitions (fade in) to make some of my clips flow better together, this also fitted in with the changing of time theme I wished to illustrate, as well as helpfully covering up any continuity errors. I also blurred some of the shots in London as I thought it looked quite good and fitted in with the hand held style of these shots. Another effect I used was to make some of the scenes look like memories. To achieve this I added a border which made it look as though the shots were home filmed. Finally, I used the reverse option on some of my shots to make my video interesting, this is only used towards the end of the video and I used it to represent how all of the 'trying to make it work' parts of the lyrics had been undone by this part of the video.

Filming

Overall, I feel that the filming of my music video went pretty well; the friends who agreed to act out the different parts for me took direction from me and listened to my ideas and suggestions. As I wanted to film the first few shots in a bar, I went to a local pub and asked the landlady if I could shoot a few scenes at the bar: she said I was more than welcome as long as I did not get her in any of the shots! I was also aware that I could not film members of the public without their permission, so I avoided filming when there were other people in the vicinity. My two friends (Ellen and Michael), who featured throughout, were extremely helpful as both gave up a lot of time to help me with my filming. They also provided different locations for me: I filmed some shots at each of their houses to add verisimilitude to the back story of my music video idea (I needed to show them in many different places). However, I found the mise en scene quite hard to do for each shot as I needed the characters to be wearing different clothes for the 'past' and 'present' scenes. This was particularly important as I wanted it to be clear to the audience that time had progressed between Michael's 'memories' and the reality.

During the time in which I had planned to film I went to London and decided that this would be a good chance to film the motorway traffic which I needed for the instrumental parts of the song. I filmed at three different stages of the day, early afternoon, dusk and evening so that I had three different times to choose from. I feel that this part of the filming went particularly well as in central London there is a lot of traffic and I hope that this footage captures the bustling crowds and busy streets as I envisioned them for these shots. I also took the opportunity to film the River Thames, as well as some other well known landmarks during the evening. I will try and use at some point in my film as these are also common themes which occur in many existing music videos.

Storyboard

 This is a rough guide as to how my finished music video will look, I may have to change a few things when I am filming.

Ideas For CD Covers

Ideas for cd covers

View more presentations from saskia44.

Three final ideas for CD cover

 After reviewing the results of my questionnaire, I chose the three most popoular pictures and quickly sketched some designs using each image as the main backdrop for my cover.

My sketches:

First Ideas for CD cover

I took some initial photographs, trying to stick with the conventions of some of the existing CD covers I researched earlier on. Here are my favourite photographs so far:

I asked 10 people which of my designs they liked the best, to help me when designing my final product.

Question: Which is your favourite of the six designs? (Left to Right 1-6)

I can tell from the results that pictures one, four and five were favoured amongst the people I asked so I will therefore experiment with different designs using these images.

Colour theory:

Colours are often associated with different emotions and can also have connotations of different things, for example red is often seen as a fiery/angry colour but also reminds people of danger or blood.

The colour wheel is a good way of comparing and contrasting colours which oppose and compliment each other:

As my song has quite emotional lyrics, I feel that a darker colour for my ancillary products would link in with the depressing/sad tone of the song.

I now know that 'The Rasmus' , 'Hockey' and 'Eminem' CD covers are the most popular so using 'Wordle' I have generated a visual image depicting some of the positive comments.



CD cover research

These are six examples of existing CD covers from a variety of different artists (pop/rock and alternative) which all differ slightly. I am going to conduct a questionnairre asking people which CD cover they prefer and why to help me when designing the cover for my CD.

I asked a total of 15 people to fill out my questionnaire, they were aged 17 - 25 as I have identified this group as my target audience.

The first question I asked was:

The results showed that 'The Rasmus' and 'Hockey' CD covers were the favourites amongst the people I asked.

I then asked them why they had chosen that CD cover as their favourite, below are a few of the comments I recieved.

I also asked what they felt were the most important features of a CD cover:

The majority of people I asked thought that the main image shown on the cover was the most important feature, with the colourscheme being the least important.

Finally, I asked people how much they would normally spend on a CD:

As you can see from my results, most people would spend between £7.50 and £10 on a CD, I should therfore retail my CD for around this price, if any people were to buy it.

I will take this feedback into consideration when designing my Cd cover as I want it to appeal to as many people as possible.