Throughout the day i have been trying to upload the cd design and the final video but it doesnt seem to be working, the images and video dont show up and a box outline just shows up. To try and resolve this problem I will contact the blogger website and keep trying to upload the files every hour.

  

Magazine Advert

Here is our magazine advert where we took inspiration from Example's previous work by using the background picture as shadows to relate to Example's album name ''Playing In The Shadows'', and the actual CD cover we used our initiative and decided to use the song name as a guideline of how to make the CD cover as shown there is someone asleep on a bench.

Our Plan finished

This is our plan that we produced at the start of this course. We created this so that we keep on track of this course and we didnt fall behind and if we did we knew we had to put extra hours of our own time to get back on track. This was very useful because this had always been a guidence to us and kept us on track.


























Posted by Jubil

Question 1: In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our music video is about having a good time and enjoying life which is portrayed by the performers in our video. We did not want to copy the exact video of Example- Stay Awake because during our initial planning meeting we has lots of creative idea’s that we wanted to do in the video. This pushed us to making a complete different video from Examples but we used his video as an guidance. However this was not to say Example had not influenced our video at all but infact it was he himself that was our biggest influence in the music video. The video was about enjoying life and having a good time and because the music was very high tempo we went with the party theme just as Examples video. We looked deep into shots used and locations from Examples video and used this in our video’s and added some of our locations and shots as well. For Example in the video Stay Awake, one of the main location at the high tempo part of the song is at a party in the woods whereas in our video our high tempo location is at a concert at the Apollo Arena. This is similar because both of the location is at a sort of party but with the difference of the location. We used the Green screen room to film parts of the video and put the exact same background that example uses in most of his video which is a white background with the letter ‘E’ on the side foe Example. We used this to make the video look professional and give the element so that it looks like Examples video and song. Also by watching Example we used similar actions that he did such as body movement and arm movements for example he never stays still when lip syncing but always moves with a lot of hand and arm movements.

We also used many of our ideas for our video. For example we used the flicking of the I phone images in the video because we thought the idea was very clever and entertaining for the audience. In our video we didn’t have a story within the music video because most of Examples videos don’t have a story and so decided not to have a specific story to this. Most music videos of this genre would have narrative parts, although we didn’t include direct narrative, we added scenes of the performers where they weren’t lip synching and paying no attention to the camera, these for example include when the performer is dancing and when he is looking at the scenery.

I think with the with the time given to produce this video we did well to produce the music video, as it is shows many conventions of a real media product. We shot the video in various locations and had a lot of lip syncing in this. Also we edited the video just as any other video to give it that professional look. We did continuity editing in our music video so that the audience is not distracted by the transaction and used various transactions to make the video look professional.

I would say our music video uses the same principals and techniques as Examples but what we did was use our ideas and our creative sense to make a video of our own using our ideas.

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

The video, magazine advert and CD case all compliment each other in ways that they're all similar, they all fall into the dub step, party themed genre and also link into way the artist has previously made CD covers, magazine adverts and videos. The artist example appeals to the teenage audience, because of the party themed music, genre and to even the type of clothing example wears. We used same type of design and style for everything, the CD cover, magazine and video. We used example’s previous work as a template to give us a rough guide of how he relates to his audience, the costumes used and the types of designs he has decided to use in the older/current work.

Here is a snapshot of Example in the video ‘Kickstarts’ wearing a standard red hoodie and checkered shirt something casual, but also something that mainly (16 - 24 year olds) would wear. Everything he wear usually would link into his audience.

Above is Example again wearing a standard t-shirt and chino pants in the video ‘change the way you kiss me’. We got an idea of the way Example dressed and the costumes we should wear from Example’s previous videos. Shown below is Jubil wearing similar clothes to Example a standard white tshirt, with chino pants and converse. All these clothes are shown in various Example videos such as 'change the way you kiss me', 'kicksarts' and in the original video for the song we decided to use 'stay awake'.

The way the videos both represent each other in similar ways are that we decided to use a party theme when the song actually kicked in, we decided to film at a concert because there we had a high mass of people similar to the big concert scene show in the 'change then way you kiss me' video. Shown below is the party scene in Example's video.

Shown below is a party scene that we shot at a concert similar to the shot shown above.

Evaluation Question 3 - Audience feedback

The audience feedback showed we had some mixed reviews, some people where fans of our video others were not.

The reviews ranged from people saying the liked how the video managed to tell the story behind the music, the song by Example has some dance elements telling a story of youth and freedom and some people thought that our video managed to portray that through our use of different shots and locations. The reviews also told of how people liked the link between the up tempo parts of the song with a more up tempo feel to the video.

Other positive reviews where that, the editing was fast paced and was in time to the song and reviews praised the lip syncing as it was in time to the music which gave the video a feel to it. However there were also negative reviews and these ranged from people who said that our editing was slightly random and didn’t have an order to it , they carried on to say to improve our shots should have been more ordered to suit the song and at times should have been slower.

People also said they would have liked to have seen some more different camera angles and different shot ranges during the video showing the main characters. And some of the people disliked the use of green screen while others liked it.

Over all we had some mixed reviews from the people who viewed. We however see this as a positive thing because it allows us to do what we did well and what we would need to improve on if we where to embark on a project like this in future.

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

Technology was used throughout our project from the research to planning to the evaluation. Media technology has benefited us very much making many tasks much easier to do and made many of our tasks completed more professional.

During the research stage the Internet (YouTube), when analyzing other music videos was very beneficial as it gave us the chance to see other professional videos, which gave us ideas on what to include in our music video. Because of the internet, we were able to access global music videos from various countries giving us a wider knowledge on music videos. This allowed us to understand fully how to target a specific audience. We found out that different music videos used different styles and context when targeting a different audience. During our research, we also used Google maps to look at potential locations for our music video. This was very useful because we could see and discuss the location sat in class than going to these various locations saving time and money.

The technology used in the planning stage was very useful. First of all the software PowerPoint on the computer was ideal to make notes on ideas for our music video, which could be sent by e-mail home so that we could make full use of our time even at home. This was useful because if we were not able to finish a task at home, we could easily send the work home so that we could complete the work there. The Internet came in handy again during the planning when we had to get the lyrics of our chosen song. The lyrics where very easy to get hold off and so we were able to annotate them easily and decide what we were doing for each stanza. After annotating our music scripts we were able to use a scanner to scan the paper and get four copies of the same notes which saved us time.

During the actual construction, mobile phones where used to communicate with all team members. This was very useful because it made communication among us so much easier and we could plan our filming day and tell each other new idea’s through the phone not wasting time. Also we communicated through Facebook as everyone in the group used Facebook and so we could also discuss idea’s and set tasks for one another through this. In addition teachers kept in touch by sending us email updating the blog if teachers had urgent notices or tasks that had to be completed. This is a fast, easy and effective method to communicate.

When making our digipack, the internet came in handy to look at other professional digipack, we could analyse them and get ideas from them to put onto our digipack. We looked at the positives and negatives of the digipack to know what was good to put on an album cover and what not to put on an album cover. To make the actual digipack we used Photoshop on the computer. This was very useful because we could edit pictures and edit them making them professional.

Constructing the actual video required using a video camera to shoot the actual footage and a memory card to within the video camera to save the footage. The memory card was then inserted into the computer where we could edit the footage using Final cut Pro. By having a memory card it made it easy to transfer the footage from the camera to the computer saving time and effort. Using Final cut Pro took much of our time because we had over 2 hours footage on our memory card of various shots and scenes for just a 4 minute music video and so we had to watch all the clips, many of which were at the same location and deleted all the unwanted footage. Even though we deleted lots of footage we still had lots of clip and footages and so we had to edit them and put it on the timeline of the song.

We also used the green screen in our music video. We used specialized green screen camera to record the footage and put a relevant background or scenery which we wouldn’t be able to in real life. Lighting was also used and managed to reduce shadow of ourselves when filming. After getting all the footage onto the timeline we had to readjust all of them again to make sure they lip synced with the music to make it professional. It was when doing this some of our video footage did not fit in with the music and so we had to redo the shots. After this Final cut Pro was also used when adding effects and transactions to the music video to make it more professional.

When making the Digipack we went to the woods to take the picture on a digital stills camera. This was very handy because we could take up to 1000 shots on the camera and so we clicked away on the camera. It was once we reviewed the shots on the camera using the preview on the camera we were able to understand what we liked about the pictures and how it could be improved. Because we could look at the pictures we were able to save time by not having o come back to college and reviewing the pictures on the computer and then going back to the location to shoot the image again because we were able to preview the picture at the location which saved all of us much time.

During the evaluation stage we produced questionnaires to fill about the music video and the digipack which was all produced on Microsoft Word. This was useful because it was easy to produce giving it a professional look and was easy to make copies of to hand out to reviewers. Also completing blog work regularly about what we did and tasks was done mostly on computer which was quick and easy to do and also to upload the work onto the blog. The tasks done on paper was easily scanned using a scanner to the blog.

In conclusion, media technology has helped us very much to complete our project successfully. If it wasn’t for media technology, our work produced would have been no where of the standard it is now and would of took more time. Media technology has helped us a lot and gave use a beeper understanding of media and this project through this.