Evaluation Question 4 (Anderson)

List of digital technologies:

•          Blogger
•          YouTube
•          Prezi
•          PowerPoint
•          Survey monkey
•          IMacs camera
•          Storyboardmaker.com
•          Sound cloud
•          Photoshop
•          Final cut pro
•          Premier Pro CS

All of these were used in constructing my media products. As this is my second year of studying media I have gained more skill on how to use these digital technologies which overall helped me more throughout in the creation of my music video digipak and magazine advert. Digital technology was very useful throughout my journey to be able to present my work. The main digital technologies what I used included Prezi, PowerPoint, YouTube, Photoshop and Premier Pro CS6 and these were used in the construction of my pre-production and post production of my media products. Having the access to these digital technologies during my  pre-production and post production stages of my products helped in presenting my planning ,research and end products in a much more visual way . My work would not have been as visually presented if I was to use blogger alone.

Blogger:

This was the main digital platform that allows us to present our planning and research for our media products. The research and planning mainly focused on all of the technical codes which are mise end scene, camera shot, angles and movement, sound and editing. This consisted of costume, lighting, narrative, location, song choice, possible camera shot and artists. Being able to show all of the research and planning made it helpful to show how I used these technical codes and how we implemented them into our production Just like every digital technology there are both positives and negative. For positives I did find it useful to embed other digital technologies such as Prezi and YouTube for others to see directly from blogger instead of being redirected to another page. The layout of blogger is also very easy to use adjust. Disadvantages however was that it did lack certain tools such as being able to draw shapes and place arrows and because of this, it made me create my research of  audience profile for example  on word to which I then screen shot to be then shown on blogger. Finally one down side is that there is a certain alignment for pictures and videos which makes it harder to write text just beside it.

Research stages:

We used media technologies such as YouTube and sound cloud to help research songs that are both non-copyrighted and created by an unsigned artist. We tried not to use any songs that already had a music video as it might have made us create somethings that looks the same. Having access to both of these platforms allowed us to find a range of songs and also have access to the artist itself through social media. YouTube was used for us to post our research and planning, use of technical skills and also our audience feedback. Both YouTube and sound cloud gave the options to search specific genres which for us were hip hop.

YouTube and Sound Cloud:

The advantages YouTube is that unlike sound cloud, it plays the song along a video. From this we were able to distinguish if it was just a background image, lyric video or music video. Another andante was that it was easier to find non copyrighted music and there are channels such a non-copyrighted rap which is the channel we used to find our song ’TGIF’ by Chris Yonge. This video did not include a music video just a background so this made it clear that we could use this song. Sound cloud however also had the option to find specific genres of music like rap, grime, blues, etc. which made it easy to just find the hip genre that we were going for. One downside however is that from sound cloud alone we are not able to know if there is a music video on other platforms which is why YouTube was the most useful by itself. Sound cloud was helpful for pitching our ideas but not as much for researching our choice of song.



Internet:

The use of internet was helpful in the planning of our locations which could be used for our music video. Google maps helped to find out how to get to these locations and google images showed us what the locations look like. Once example of the location we research was the graffiti tunnel in waterloo and knowing what the location looks like helped plan ahead what types of camera shots and angles would suit best for this location. Only issue is that you are unable to plan and research if your internet if offline and sometimes when your internet speed is slow which was sometime the case on the macs, it makes your searches more time consuming. We had used the internet to also plan our digipak as we were not as familiar to what a digipak was or its structure and layout. Having access to the internet gave us the ability to view real digipaks from artists such as ‘Drake’ to help us create our own. We found out that not all digipaks have to same layout in structure and how many consist how having 4 nets up to 6 nets. Being able to look at other digipaks helped us to understand the focus how we can implement the conventions into our product. Using google images again helps us find a 6 net template so without this we would have had to create the template our self.

Social Media:

Social media was useful in terms of contacting the artist for permission to use there song and finding our more about the artists personality. Knowing more about the artist’s lifestyle helped in trying to portray his actions when filming our music video. The messages he replied with shown in the image below told us how he is quite a relaxed and laid back artist so we tried implementing this in our music video through the use of hand gestures and facial expressions. The downsides of using just social media is that is doesn’t show all of the artists full song and this is more likely to be pasted on other platforms such as YouTube. Social media is more used for fans to keep updated with the artist’s work and his everyday lifestyle

IMacs and Photobooth:

When creating our research we used the program photo booth. This is a built in software on the iMac which uses the camera on the iMac to record videos and take pictures.  To continue our research into genre and progress with our media products, this was good to record our initial ideas and group pitches. Another key thing we used this for was to record our audience feedback. From this we were able to re watch our audience’s opinion to see what improvements we could make on our products. The built is camera also had quite a wide lens which was useful in recoding many people at once instead. Some disadvantages however was that it only records video and not audio. Some audience member was quite shy on camera and therefore did not want to be recorded.

Storyboardmaker.com:

When creating our storyboard we used the website storyboardmaker.com to create a cartoon visual presentation of what our music video should look.  It allows you insert images as well as cartoon visuals that are given on the website. This helped us to create our animatic use the pictures from and pre-sets from the storyboard were saved to be edited using final cut pro.

Digital Camera:

We used a canon dlsr camera for the creation of our music video. As we used this camera for our AS course to film out thriller opening, this made using the camera much more professionally as now we are more familiar on how to adjust the ISO, Shutter speed and aperture to be able to film video in iw light settings and also to achieve a shallow depth of field. The camera also had the option to place a grid on the display which helps implement rule of thirds when recording shots. The main point of the camera was to record what is in front of the camera which is our artist but with various angles. The ability to zoom in and out helped in readjusting the video to focus on what you want to film. This zooming in on the artist will help to achieve mid shots of close ups. The camera was also used to take pictures which were later used for our magazine advert and digipak shot pictures. Auto focus made it easier to film while walking however I preferred to use manual on shot when standing as sometimes the camera would focus on what even is the closest which may not be what I wanted.  Advantages of the DSLR Camera was that it is able to film in high quality (1080p) which made is easier in post-production to change the scale of the video without it losing any of its resolution. This camera had settings that can go up to very high ISO which helped film in the tunnel scene where lighting was low. Some downsides was that I wanted to film create slow motion in post-production however the camera did not have the option to film 60 fps but only 30fps. Because I this I used my own camera. The NIKON D300 to achieve this as the option of filming 60fps was available. As we filming in high quality, this took up a lot of space on our SD card which lead to bring many SD cards and constantly having to change them when we had no more memory. Not only this sometimes our footage will corrupt which lead to filming again. Finally as some shots were filmed at night like our the party scene, our footage did contain noise which decreased the quality of our video and  made it look less professional.

PowerPoint:

PowerPoint was key in my research and planning. Not only was it easy to use with its various amounts of tools but also includes many background presents to make presenting your work more visual. You can place wide variety of images, shapes and text boxes which can all be customized with colour. One problem is that videos cannot be played. These meant we could not add our audience feedback or podcasts so if we wanted too, we would have had to redirect the person viewing this with a link

Prezi: 

Prezi was good in visually presenting our work and also had the ability to be embedded into our blog. Unlike PowerPoint the animations look much more interesting. It also comes with many free pre-set designs for you to present your work. Some down sides to Prezi is that it is quite a time consuming process. Sometimes your work may be lost and also the each slide is quite small in size to large amounts of text cannot be fitted into it. 

Premier Pro CS6:

Premier Pro is an editing software just like final cut pro and this was used to make my music video 'TGIF' . I preferred to use this program as there are more inbuilt presets that helped to make my music video look much better. An example of this would be the ability to colour grade manually. This was done with a three way colour corrector and the benefit of this is that your footage looks less dull and more professional. Besides the video this program also let me create the clean version of the song. There are also more built in transitions in premier pro and unlike final cut pro it has more tools to be able to create your own transitions as you can transfer your clips to after effects to be edited more further. One main advantage was that is was easier to stack clips on top of each other which is something that final cut pro cannot do. It also auto saves every 5 mins so there are less chances of you losing your work. One disadvantage is that when using many effects at once on one clip. the preview does not render as quickly.

Evaluation Question 3 (Anderson)

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

My audience feedback linked towards genre?

During the making of my media products, the repetitive use of audience feedback helped make both large and small changes to our products and in the end helped improve our final products. Audience feedback was to the making of our magazine advert digipak and music video and without these constructive criticisms our products would have looked quite different to what it is now.

Song choice and genre?

'Survey Monkey' is a digital platform that allows everyone like me to create survey online for anyone to partake in. The use of surveys helped engage different audiences who varied in hobbies, music taste, and age. We made the questions simple and straight to the point to make our decisions much easier to what our product should include. Some examples of the questions we used are: what genres do you listen to, what you would expect to see in a Hip-Hop music video, what is your age and what are convention of rap genre to you. From our audience feedback we came to the conclusion to base our choice in genre to hip hop and the demand and interest towards this was the most popular out of the other music genres.

Again with the help of audience feedback, other questions that we asked linked towards the hip hop genre gave us the impression that we should use props such as money and other factors like alcohol and girls in order conform the stereotype of rap music videos. For this reason we implemented these ideas in order to make our music video more appealing to our target audience as it meets the demand and interest of our consumers.

Why was this audience feedback important and how did the use of audience feedback beneficial in structuring our music video?

Overall our audience feedback helped to narrow what genre to pick, possible locations that would suit this genre and also the age of our target audience. This information was important in terms of structuring a music video that most of our target audience can enjoy and relate to. The use of the questionnaire gave us an insight towards a suitable target market towards the hip hop genre which is ages mainly between 16-24 yrs old. As a group we were able to know what conventions are related to the hip hop genre in terms of mise en scene and camera shots, angles and movement, sound and editing. In terms of mise en scene we knew what props, costumes and lighting would suit best in terms of filming what camera angles would be most suited for the music video. For sound we knew it had to be a hip-hop song which leads us to the choice of the (TGIF by Chris Yonge). Finally for editing we knew that the music video should consist of many cuts to make it look quicker and upbeat just like the song and also visual transitions. All of these helped us to create a much more realistic hip-hop music video. The use of audience feedback also leads us to the connotations within hip hop which resulted in us having enough information and ideas to be to create a plan and storyboard for our music video.

Feedback on our song choice:

As a group we had many ideas of possible songs we could use for our music video. For this reason we let other people listen and give feedback of what song may suit best and why. To make this fair we chose people who have different tastes in music and this mean we can have feedback of both people how enjoy the hip hop genre and from those who don’t.

From this we were able to conclude how different audiences from outside our school could react. Some mentioned how the use of language was too explicit and that we should consider possibly making a clean version which is something we did create for our music video. This was a key point and made us think more about marketing as keeping a song PG makes it more appealing to audiences that our outside our target audiences. This is mainly to those much younger from ages 16 and under. When creating a clean version of our song, we aimed not to just cut the parts off where there is swearing as this will lower the quality of the song. I tried to imitate what a clean version of a song would sound like if it was on the radio and tried implementing this to our song. I achieved this by lowering the volume slightly where there was swearing and overlaying it with a blur sound effect. By doing so not only could we reach a much broader target audience but also make the quality of the song is not ruined.

Our audience feedback on our choice of song helped us to decide that we should use the lyrics of the song to create a narrative to tell a story by linking it towards the lyrics of the song. This mainly consisted of going out and partying just like every average person within our target audience. We were able to achieve this by having the music video ordered into sections each with different locations. Examples would be how we went from a barber scene where our main character was getting ready to our next shot which was our party scene.  From our audience feedback we also got told how to be able to represent a party scene the use of alcohol as a prop would be effective in portraying the stereotype as it is something you associate with partying. This idea was filmed however we did not show anyone drinking to keep our wide target audience.

Costume and audience feedback:

Here we got feedback with the use of a printed questionnaire. We used this an we can easily have members of our class to give us their opinions everyone fits into the age range of our target audience. This mainly consisted of ages 17 to 18. From these questions we were able to plan ahead to one of the technical codes (mise en scene) to focus on how we can use costume to portray the hip hop genre.

Audience feedback on rough cut:

The reason behind getting feedback during different phases of our editing process was to understand what looked good to others. By doing this it made it easier to make minor changes throughout instead of major changes towards the end. We also decided to get some audience feedback from the older ages of our target audience to have opinions ad feedback from two different age groups

Overall both audience feedback commented on the effective use of mise en scene as our main character who acted as the artist looked realistic in being a rapper. They mentioned also how the lip syncs throughout was done well however there was one part of the song where the lip sync was slightly out of time. This was something I did not realise during the editing process therefore this audience feedback was useful to help make those minor changes. The use of match on action was said to make the music video realistic when changing from one scene to another however someone commented about how some scenes transition to other scenes that have too much different in lighting. From this I decided to use colour correction and to adjust the brightness and contrast to make it look that the lighting is similar to most clips. Our audience also liked the choice of location as it followed the convention of a jip-hop music video due to it lively. On the other hand our audience wanted to see more angles such as a close up of the artist himself.

Why audience feedback was important in this stage?

From the audience feedback we received we focused only about what they didn’t like to be able to continue improving our music video. This mainly was to do with the realism of making it look like a music video. This was to do with the lip sync at one stage of the music video which didn't work well and also minor details such as lighting details. This feedback enabled us to learn from the mistakes which we were not able to point out. After this we went back to our edit and began to fix these issues.

Final cut audience feedback:

We also decided to show our final version of our music video to our whole class to see whether they believe that our  music video portrayed the convention of rap genre. From our audience response many liked the use of smooth transitioned to make the music video look more continuous when changing from one location to another. Many people also thought that the use of locations suited the conventions of  the hip-hop genre and how each location suited the next to be able to show a narrative. They also enjoyed how we linked the lyrics of the song to the locations in the music video. Many also thought that the use of colours of both our locations and titles and also the colour correction used. Many said that the use of colour correction made the video look the shots look less dull and more professional. 

Overall what we learnt form audience feedback:

From the constant use of audience feedback I have learnt that is acts as a vital tool be able to point our mistakes that perhaps you did not point out yourself. Because of this it enabled and guided me to be able to fix and create a much more professional looking music video. Not only this, it aided in the in decision making during preproduction which mainly included our storyboard and the choice of location and clothing. I have also noticed the impact of audience feedback helped result our music video to suit much more than our target market.

Audience feedback on our magazine advert and digipak:

Our audience feedback for both our magazine advert and digipak consisted of many positives and negatives which overall helped us make changes to achieve a much more realistic product.

Positives:

• Our audience mentioned how the images used relates to the genre of hip hop due to the use of urban clothing worn by the artist. 

• They also enjoyed the choice of image for our front cover and how all our images include synergy of the urban theme.

• The use of different font sizes made it clear to distinguish each title and how the use of font colour made it easy to know what was the song name and the artist himself. Not only this the font is clear and bold makes it eye catching for audiences like themselves 

• They thought that the concept of designing the digipak to be able to fit a booklet inside was a nice touch

• They also mentioned how both our magazine advert and digipak used synergistic elements such as location, use of font and colour

• Overall they said how our magazine advert and digipak does convey the conventions of real media products relating to these

Criticisms:

• Some people mentions that there was too much text and that we should make it more simplistic

• Others thought that the bar code looks different compared to other digipaks

• The rating shown made people believe it was a movie trailer however after mentioning that this was one of intentions of the magazine advert they thought that it was a nice touch

• Some made a good point how our main image for our magazine advert and digipak included the Simpson character behind our artist. They mentioned how many had more attention on Bart Simpson and believed the song to be related to him.

• However on a whole our audience believed that our magazine advert is effective in promoting our music video as it conveys many of the conventions of real media text magazine advert. They said that it looks realistic and is believable for being a poster.

Evaluation Question 2 (Anderson)

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

https://prezi.com/view/nKmvz4XmHbSz5gCQuEP9/

MUSIC VIDEO

MAGAZINE ADVERT

DIGIPAK

Evaluation Question 1 (Anderson)

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

Final Product: Music Video 'TGIF'

Here is our final product with improvements made to it from audience feedback.

Final Product: DigiPak

FINAL DIGIPAK

The original net we used:

Final Product: Magazine Advert

Final Product: Advert with audience feedback

• we have showed our peers what we have created and they have showed various opinions on our  advert which is good because we are able to understand their point of view.
• The main feedback we have received was that the picture does resemble the genre of rap based on the clothing of the character and the graffiti style image.
• We have received comments that it includes what real adverts have seen of bands such as 'Chainsmokers' and 'Jay-z'. They said that it contains what is needed on a adverts e.g. the social media links like spotify and the website which will allow them to find out more about the music video.
• its aesthetically pleasing to the eyes because of the colour scheme, the colour scheme is blue yellow and orange which is contrasted with the great background. the image stands out to the audience which allows them to link the image of bart simpson to our rapper
• our audiences believed that the font size of the title and name make it easier to distinguish what this advert is about (which is a song) and his name is easily distinguishable as it the first thing you see when looking at the poster

Criticisms:

• based on my audience i was able to find out that the colour of grey on black makes the writing not stand out as she was not able to see the song/ album name.
• The rating shown suggests that its like a movie as movie trailers have ratings on them which is what made them a bit confused about the intention of the advert. however they mentioned that because the rapper is crouching it makes it seem as if its a music video
• the rapper was also an issue because he seems smaller than the image in the background of bart Simpson which means that the attention is on bart Simpson rather than on the rapper which is why he said to enlarge the image of the rapper to make it seem more about him. 

overall they believed that the advert is believable and it does convey and portray rap genre throughout it as the graffiti links to rap/hip hop, the outfit of the rapper and pose makes him seem more ghetto and more like the hip hop culture. the vibe and atmosphere of adverts is a gangster vibe which is good because it suggests a strong link with rap genre.however there are aspects which i would change about this advert such as the font colour, it blends in too much with the grey background so if i was to repeate this process i would try and experiment with more colours and placements of fonts.

TGIF Music video with audience feedback

 Heres our audience feedback on the editing we have created so far. Their ideas and views are documented and shown on aspects which they like and dislike.

PRODUCTION: Rough Cut - Feedback

Here is the  first rough cut for our Music video 'TGIF' by Chris Yonge

And here is the feedback we got for our Rough Cut

CONSTRUCTION POST: 3 days of filming

Day 1 of filming we filmed in Waterloo Graffiti tunnel

Our start time was 9:50 this is because we needed the tunnel to be empty so we chose 9;50 am because most people would be at work and this shows us carrying the dolly.

Our first try in filming, we were trying out angles, lighting and which end of tunnel we should film in, we had two cameras i shot long shots whilst the other filmed close ups

this is when we settled down in the waterloo tunnel,we needed the dolly for the tracking shots and smooth shots so this is us setting it up

this represents the two cameras we used, this shows the smoother dolly shots and the extreme close ups which we filmed. with two cameras we gained more angles and shots

this shows our useage of space and change of angles, also our two cameras are featured which shows the different angles we chose

this clip shows our journey we had to use two tubes to get to the location however we chose non busy hours so we got there in 1hour which is managable

this is us viewing the area, looking for sections of the tunnel to use for filming, we looked at graffiti which we though would look good such as the one on the ceiling or the one with the girl drawn on.

Day two: hounslow treaty centre car park:

here it shows how we recorded we had the song playing through speaker this allowed us to know what parts we need to film for the section of the song. We also needed to repeat a verse and re shoot which is why one filmed other changed song/ re winded it

this was us looking at locations, looking around this one for sections which we can film a dance routine in. We all started preparing the camera and lighting.

this clip shows us trying different angles, and areas in the same location. additionally we looked at health and safety measures as i looked around in case cars were coming as its was a car park

This is our group member warming up for the dance scene and us checking if the lighting is good / looking around for cars coming.

This clip shows how we needed someone to change the song and rewind it to the specific scene which we need to shoot in this location. 

This is the behind the scenes, where we later switched who films so that me and my other group member each shoot certain scenes.

This sign we read it and it allowed us to film and what to do in case something happens which is important if a car runs us over or fire occurs while we film.

Day 3 of shooting: In our group members house:

This is us sending a message which would be shown on the camera where its filming the other phone which is receiving the text to make it seem as if he just got a text from a friend

This shows our creativity as we had one camera on a tripod and the other one was on books to make the camera angle low which would match the bed scene.

This clip shows our use of two camera which shows how we got more than one angle whilst shooting the same scene. This allows the editor to have more clips to chose from