Evaluation Post #4

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

All throughout our coursework and the completion of different tasks, different media technologies were essential throughout. In the beginning we used sites such as youtube and blogger to plan our early ideas, being able to watch videos and write about them etc. For example in my blogging earlier with trying to search for a song to use in our music video none of that would of been able to of been completed if it wasn't for sites like YouTube. And of course withut the aid of blogger it self none of the progress we were making would of been able to of been documented to help and inspire othergroup's work and use their blogs to inspire and improve our own.

The big help definitely did come in the construction stages of your work, shown here in James and I editing our music video. Without the aid of tools like Final Cut being able to edit down our video, it would be very difficult to piece together seperate pieces of footage and be extremely time consuming on the day of filming, and thusly by using programmes like Final Cut it made the process significantly easier. James and I did find problems getting to grips with anew piece of software in ohur lives like Final Cut and especially on a different type of computer like a Mac, but with disagreements with the machines and programmes on them we learnt from these disagreement and soon we became adept at them, as withut them our coursework would of not been produced.

Also here is the programme named Photoshop, with which James and I had experienced before and found it a great help in creating our digipack and magazine advert, and creating them to an industry standard comparable to many adverts a reader would find in a popular music magazine like, the NME, exactly the type of magazine that would get the audience James and I were targetting. It was also very handy in viewing products like our digipak as seen on the right here in the finished form without having to actually produce them physically.

The music software reaper also came in handy with James and I as we came to a point in production where we decided the original 6 minute version of 'Love Spreads' would be too long and had to edit it down to a reasonable size.

Evaluation Post #3

3 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To measure our audiences perception on our products, James posted the artwork and final cut of our music video on a reasonable sized indie guitar forum, then took the responses i got and helped edit my work accordingly. We picked the places for audience feedback based on if it has diversified members but also a large amount of indie memebrs also to coinicide with our audience research. One of the places we used was the before mentioned guitar forum, all with members with a common liking being Guitars, and the heavy reliance and prominance of guitars in our song is somthing they all identified with, making this place a very good place for things to advance in terms of our audience feedback.

This comment on the left commented on the dull lighting and environment on the room, due to lack of time we couldnt refilm it was dificult to refilm and we could make beter time with properly concentrating on editing , but using contrast adjustments in final cut pro James and I managed to alter the contrast and make the footage seem more striking for the viewer.

Another comment received here was mentioning the acting and that it was of good quality which was pleasing to here. It also mentioned about editing a few of the shots and making them become more in synch with the beat of the music a convention James and I were adement about, soon we had changed a few shots and the music video seemed to run a lot smoother along with the video.

Also to coincide with our target audience of young fans of rock and indie music, James and I posted our work on Facebook and collected comments from our friends and peers on our work

The comments show how well the media package does work amongst people of our target audience, this is pleasing to see as it does openly display how well maybe our product could survive in the real media world.

Evaluation Post #2

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

I believe James and I successfully managed to combine our main product with our ancillary tasks quite well, through a series of techniques like creating a house brand with our products, we did this in several ways, such as the running theme of black and white throughout our three products and making sure a the same instruments and similar poses were used through out. If my audience would see either the poster or the music video or magazine advert they would instantly recognize it because of the similarities in design they share from recognizing the black and white video stills from the music video, on the album cover and magazine.

James and I also made it our priority to include the faces of the four members of our band on our cover for our digipak and magazine advert, and also the music video where we showed the 4 members faces extensivly, to help our audience identify with our band as a brand and a product. For example here in our two ancillary tasks:, there is the common re-occurence of certain member's faces to really establish that house style but to also just really help promote the band in our project, like a real world media product would.

Evaluation Post #1

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

Our music video uses a variety of music video conventions thoughout, which is what we were aiming to do with our task, but also challenges any of them along with the production of it aswell.

Firstly we abided to a lot of the usual conventons of media products by using a lot of the ordinary, basic shots that can be found in many famous music videos, this makes the music video easily viewable for our audience and easily accessible. The shots we aimed (and succeeded) in using the singers face shot, this sems to hold some importance as it lets the audience quickly develop an unspoken connection with the singer in the video, as if he (the singer) is singing to the audience himself, it also identifies them to the audience letting them know who it is, and makign it easily recognisable for later on, helping promote the bands music in a positive way, a very usual convention of music videos. These shots are typical close ups, focusing on the face, especially the eyes and mouth of the singer James and I used this shot extensivly throughout our video again helping the audience to establsh that particiular connection with the lead singer, and makign sure that the lead singer could be seen as definatley recognizable and identifiable.

Our video includes a lot of guitar solo's, so James and I thought it should be highly important that our audience knew our guitarist and could see what he was doing, the audience culd thusly not only see and hear the lyrical content develop but also the musical conent and the main drive of the song, really letting our audience become absorbed in the music video, not particularly challenging any convention in real media products like mine but still definitely helpful in presenting the music video. Again we included shots of the guitarist playing regularly in order to really let the audience become absorbed in the music of the song. A lot of the time when shooting the footage of the guitarist we used medium close ups of the finger work and mid-body movement of the guitarist to really help let the audience become absorbed in the musical beat of the guitar playing. We also used a few quite high angle shots of the guitar player to establish his dominance in the song, again expoiting this guitar driven nature of the song. Many similar real music videos also have this convention evident in them as to realy add emhpasis the guitar which is very important in rock music, like the style of our song, not an unusual convention in music videos, not one we have challenged but one we have included to great effect.

This above mentioned convention of media is one that also relates to that of the drummer and the bassist as the audience need that connection to be created between them both, for example in this screen grab when the position and nature of the drummer is shown to the audience the relationship between musician and audience can begin, which is a very important convention when creating a music video in the modern age.

I feel as though James and I have succesfully utilised typical conventions in media through our shot choices, using classic and recognizable methods of shooting our band for example rotating between guitar and vocals. These famous music videos that have popularised bands and the same effect may occur with ours if it were a real media product. We also tried to develop and expand on many conventions of music video's, one group of shots mat and I thought would be important to include would be "profile" shots of each member, outside the performance environment, we also tried to show them having fun and enjoying themselves, to keep with the feeling of the laid back nature of the song, to really enhance that quite unconventional feel of showing a band in a music video and trying to promote them even without them playing their instruments, maybe even enhancing a sense of iconography in the video. Editing to the beat was also a big thing in abiding to certain usual conventions of media products, but not one we went out to obey rather one that just naturally occured, to really drive that rhythm and help draw the audience in to our video.

Final Magazine Advert

This is our final magazine advert. The use here of the album cover is fantastic is displaying the band's album and the prominence of it, especially in how it spreads over the face of an A4 sheet. To link back to my mood board, the theme of religion in 'Love Spreads' is played upon here in the release date of easter sunday to coincide with the title of the 'Second Coming' a good way of getting across to our target audience the new album in quite an inconic and quirky way. The creation of a house theme is definitely evident here as this links in with the digipak and the music video creatign an all round well-produced promotion, which is what James and I are supposed to have aimed to create.

Finished Digipak

Here is mine and James' finished digipak cover with comparison to our original video i can see that this is very effective in creating a link between the video and this digipak, its safe to say the old rock and roll style of the song with the vinyl record on the back of the digipak really helps broadcast that overall style our audience which is what we wanted to achieve.

Construction and Completion of the Digipak

I was mainly absent on workign on the digipak, but James still consulted me on many of the design processes of the digipak.

Firstly James created the idea of using a vinyl record being included on the front cover, soon we reaised that this may look better on the back and decided to use it as the back cover.

James and I then placed an all black background for the front cover and begun work on that.

Here you can see where James and I have placed four screen grabs from our music video, to really again get across our band and market them which is the overall point of creating a digipak.

Next James added font to the album cover, which really had a torn away feel to it which was important when creating a digipak that would mirror the music in our music video. It also really helped bring out the contrast of balck and white in the screen shots and also in the video. The bold type face as well would really help draw in an audience as it boldly states the name of the band and the album title, ideal for use in an magazine advert also.

The comparison noted here is in how we added a sticker to the front cover to really add that feel of a realistic media product, which i beleive was done exceedingly well expecially in the contrastign colours of the black and white with the gold sticker.