Evaluation, Question 4.

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

Evaluation, Question 3.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation, Question 2.

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

       

Evaluation, Question 1.

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

Feedback on Music Video!

As a way of getting feedback from our target audience on our music video, we decided to create a questionnaire/survey for them to fill in. We did this using the Google Docs application: an option on the Google website that allows you to create professional, online questionnaires. After getting some replies from the questionnaire, Google Docs collated the data into pie charts and graphs, enabling us to interpret the data better. From the results we found that most of our target audience enjoyed watching the music video and in particular, liked the story line, the reverse effect we used and the overall style of the video. The one thing they would have liked to have seen was a band/singer singing the song. They thought the story line was easy to understand, the genre was made obvious, and they would rate it no lower than an 8.

For anyone else wishing to give us feedback on our video, here is the questionnaire!

Final Music Video

Audience Feedback from Print Task!

After finishing our print task, we decided to film a focus group to get feedback from our target audience. As stated earlier, we found our target audience to be the younger generation, aged 16-20, both male and female and interested in indie style music. For this reason, we chose particular people within our class who we felt matched the description. In order to start discussions, we gave them a range of topics to talk about including the style of the images; the style of the font used; the use of the two different locations; likes/dislikes and a rate out of 10. We then left the camera to film in order to get honest opinions from the group. We then asked another group (fitting our target audience) to write down things they would change about the task and things they thought worked well.

The first group thought the locations fitted well together and liked how the images looked quite vintage. They all agreed that seeing the magazine advertisement in a real magazine would definitely catch their attention and get them interested which means we have captured our target audience!

The second group thought the print task seemed organised and that all images and locations worked well together. They said it all seemed to link together perfectly and the font suited the overall style.

Final Print Task

Front Cover

Back Cover

Insert going behind the CD

Insert

Insert

Post Card

Post Card

Post Card

Post Card

Magazine Advertisement

Here is our final print task: our CD front cover, back cover, inserts and post cards and our magazine advertisement.

Results of Audience Research

The spreadsheet above shows the results of our survey for our Audience Research. It clearly shows that the majority of our audience are under 18 years old and mostly listen to folk style music, which is the style of music video we wanted to achieve. It also shows that our audience enjoy reading the music magazine NME, they listen to music often and are more likely to buy their music from their local music store than download it from iTunes.

Audience Research

In order to distinguish our target audience and find out more about the people who are likely to watch and enjoy our music video, we have created a survey using Google Docs. It is an online survey relating to the music interests of our audience and we would greatly appreciate it if you would take the time to fill it out.

In order to distinguish our target audience and find out more about the people who are likely to watch and enjoy our music video, we have created a survey using Google Docs. It is an online survey relating to the music interests of our audience and we would greatly appreciate it if you would take the time to fill it out.










Thank you!


Thank you!

Editing the video

After finishing the filming of our music video, we have now begun the process of editing the clips. As stated earlier in the blog we are hoping to create quite a vintage, old-style feel to the video so we are currently looking through the effects that Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 has to offer and deciding upon the best one for our video. We are hoping to cut our video down to 2 minutes 36 seconds and then place the reverse effect on the video!

Filming has begun

Yesterday we began filming for our music video and we decided to start off at Herrington Country Park. We spent a few hours there filming, re-taking shots and taking photo's also. The part's of the video we shot included me walking around and about the field, landscape shots and a few close-up's. I feel the day was successful and we got many good clips to use! Today we filmed more of the video at Seaburn Beach. Again we spent a few hours filming and got more good footage. The clip's we got included me standing at the sea front, walking along the beach, close-up's, and we also managed to include some props which worked out really well! 

Throughout the two days we managed to get most of the clip's we need for the video that just include me and on Monday we are planning on beginning filming with the male actor, Nath. We hope to be finished filming in one week's time, ready to start editing!

Final actors

After discussion with my group, we decided that the actors to appear in the music video would be myself and my boyfriend, Nath Adamson. We decided this as we are both reliable and free at similar times meaning our group have more time to film the music video. Also we know each other well which makes it a lot more comfortable and easier to act together in the video. 

Inspirational Text

For another inspirational text for the magazine advert, I have chosen the one above which is advertising The Verve's single 'Love is Noise'. 

This magazine advert is completely different to the other ones I have chosen for inspirational texts. It has a different layout, different kind of image, etc. The reason I have done this is to add some variation to the inspirational texts on my blog and to show the options me and my group are considering for the advert. 

Although this is different to our flat plan for our advert, I still believe it keeps with the theme of our project. The colour palette for this magazine advertisement is quite limited, which is what we are aiming for and the image is quite vintage looking. It looks as though there has been a sepia effect added to the image which is what we will be adding to our video so, again, it keeps with the theme. The image covers the whole of the page which actually gives a good effect and helps elaborate the detail of the photograph.

There are two different fonts used on the advertisement; the signature font of the band name and the font used to give details at the bottom of the page. I feel this is quite a traditional technique when it comes to adverts such as these; we have tried using a few different fonts on our advertisement but it doesn't seem to be fitting so we will be trying just two different fonts. 

Overall the advertisement is quite minimal but really sets a tone and it would definitely catch my attention in a magazine! 

Inspirational Videos

As said in the post before, we are looking at having an aged, vintage effect throughout our music video. After searching on YouTube for videos with this effect, I came across the two above. The reason I chose these for my blog is because of the location; both videos are set in a field which is where our video will partly be set. As well as that, they also have the old-style effect throughout so it gives the audience a really good image of what we hope the finished product will look like.

Reverse Effect

For part of our music video, we are hoping to incorporate a "reverse effect". We decided to film me and another member of the group at the beach and attempt to add on the reverse effect to see if it could work. We also attempted to add on a sepia effect as the look we are going for, for our music video, is quite old-style. The programme we used to edit the clip is Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. The above video is not the best quality and just a practise clip to give the audience a feel of what the outcome will hopefully look like!

Inspirational Text

For another inspirational text for the CD cover, I have chosen the Adele album 19.
The main thing that caught my attention about this cover was Adele's face and how it's almost in the shadow's. I think this gives the CD cover a real mysterious feel and will make the audience want to know more!
Like most of the other inspirational texts I have chosen, this has also used a very minimal colour palette which I think just gives it a more professional look. I think sometimes when too much colour is used, there can be too much going on and the audience don't know which part to focus on. With a CD cover such as this, there is an obvious, main focal point and I think it does a good job of drawing the audience in.
As on any traditional CD cover, there is only the artist's name and the album name. Adele's name is in quite a traditional font and is white, which contrasts hugely with the all black background. The album title '19' is in a different font to the name, which I think is quite important as, since they are both quite close to each other, it could become a little confusing to the consumer if they were to just glance at the cover. The album title is also in a slightly different colour (light, baby pink) which not only helps separate the artist's name from the album name but I think the dash of colour just makes it stand out that little bit more!

Time Management

We decided to plan out all of the deadlines for our project on a calender so we could get an actual image of how long we had to meet these deadlines! We also added reminders for things such as photo shoots for our print tasks and dates in which all of the group and our actors were free to shoot the music video.

Inspirational Text

Matt Cardle - Run For Your Life

I recently seen this music video for Matt Cardle's up and coming single 'Run For Your Life' on television. This isn't the type of music I would normally listen to but after seeing a few seconds of the video, I decided to youtube the song and give the whole video a watch. The reason behind this is it is actually quite similar to the music video me and my group will be producing (minus the male singer). Throughout the video, we are introduced to a female character who has been filmed in a variety of different locations. Two of the main locations seem to be the beach and a field which are similar locations our group are planning on doing for our video, so it gives you a good idea of what our final product will hopefully look like!

I also like how the female is filmed in slow motion, I think it gives a good effect across the whole video and really sets a mood! 

Inspirational Text - Magazine Advert

For the magazine advertisement, we have decided to keep it similar to our flat plan as we quite liked the idea of using four images in a table-like layout.

The magazine advert for Mumford & Sons, I feel, really keeps with the theme of our whole project. The images have an old-style, grainy effect which we will be trying out with our images. We would love to be able to get this effect on our actual music video also which I feel would tie all aspects of the project together. There are a few different fonts used throughout the advert which I feel 'breaks it up' and keeps the audience interested. I think, along with the old-style images, the calligraphy fonts that are used really give an overall vintage feel to the advert!

The second magazine advert for The Stone Roses - Second Coming, has a more modern feel to it. The colour palette is again quite minimal using only blacks and whites with a dash of yellow. The line that is shown in yellow is made to stand out which, because of the colours used, I feel works well! The images used may be in the same layout as the Mumford & Sons advert but the style of the images are completely different. They seem to have been taken whilst the band were performing so it is almost like an action shot! As they have no effect on them (apart from the black and white colouring) they instantly make the advert more modern and edgy. I also think the font used contributes to this; I find it bold, edgy and attention grabbing!

Inspirational Text - Album Art

Whilst looking on the internet for examples of album art, I came across the two above that have inspired me and my group to rethink our album cover. We have already designed our flat plan for the album cover but we are constantly trying to improve upon our idea to get the best out of our project!

The first album cover is for the Deftones album named Diamond Eyes. This caught my attention as soon as I saw it, I find the detail of the owl amazing! I also love how it is in mid-flight and think it really captures the moment perfectly. The colour palette is very minimal which I think keeps the overall feel of the cover quite professional, which is what we are planning on doing with ours.

However, the chances of us managing to get a photo like this are quite low! This is where the next album cover caught my attention, which is an album by an artist named Robyn called Indestructable. The actress we are featuring in our music video actually has a tattoo covering her right shoulder; the tattoo is an image of a large feather which has little pieces falling off the feather which transform into birds flying away. The above image is a perfect inspirational text for this idea as if we were able to get the actress to stand in a similar pose/position as Robyn, we feel we could get a really strong photo for our album art!

Lyrics

The above lyrics are those from the song we will be using for our music video, City and Colour - The Girl.

E-Mailing the music company

As we have decided to go with our plan B, we needed to e-mail the company that manage the band, who's song we will be using. The band, City & Colour, are currently managed by three record labels; Dine Alone records, Vagrant records and Arts & Craft Mexico records. One member of the group, Stacey, e-mailed all three record companies (as shown below) and we are currently awaiting a reply!

Plan B!

As we decided to base our music video on a local band that we actually know, we decided it would be best to come up with a plan B, incase any problems occured with the band such as availability. After much discussion we came up with the idea of having a music video based on the song below - 'City & Colour: The Girl.' Our video will consist of two main characters, a male and female, and the storyline will be about their relationship coming to an end because of the male character having to leave. We have found suitable actors for both roles in the video and are currently coming up with more specific ideas for different scenes within the video!

Storyboard

This is the beginning of our storyboard for our music video. Instead of drawing the images ourselves we found actual photographs online, similar to the type of shots we will be using, so our audience can have a better image in their mind of what the video will look like!

Flat Plan - CD/Album Cover

This is the flat plan for the CD/Album cover for the band. The image we have used for this one is again a silhouette shot but instead of taken in a studio, this one has been taken on a beach. After discussing it with the group, we decided we would try shots in both locations and see which ones turned out the best, so this is an example of what the CD cover could like if we were to use the location silhouette shot. 

The colours used for the CD cover (if we went for this type of shot) are less limited than the magazine cover. Here we see a range of black's, yellow's and orange's, with some purple shades also. Although these seem quite bright colours, I feel the overall image is still quite dark and it still fits with the style of the overall project. 

As on the magazine cover, we will try to not include the girl's face so no make-up will be needed. If we do a long shot, such as this, we will probably go with similar costume as it ties in nicely with background. The floaty dress will represent the femininity of the girl and the hat will give it more edge. 

As on any traditional CD cover, the text is always limited, with just the band name and album title. We have made both of these black to match the silhouette; any other colour may be harder to see/read with the other colours on the image and I feel (along with where the text is placed) it actually stands out. The font we have used is the same as on the magazine cover. We feel this is a suitable font for the band name and intend to keep it as the band's signature font. 

The overall layout of the CD cover is quite simple and traditional. We have made the image cover the whole CD front, which you regularly see with CD's these days. 

Flat Plan - Magazine Advertisement

This is the flat plan for our magazine advertisement for the band's album. We've gone with quite a simple, classic look for the advertisement. We decided that, because of the type of band they are, if we were to have a lot going on in the advertisement (bright colours, lots of text, etc) this wouldn't really match the style of band they are. 

The colours that will be used in the advertisement are quite limited, mostly black, white and probably a little of another colour (as shown above). We feel the limited use of colour could make it look more professional. Also, as there will be limited use of colour in the actual music video, this means the imagery and video will fit together nicely and match. 

For the images we have decided to try out silhouettes. These will be mostly studio shots (possibly some at a location e.g. the beach) and will be the silhouette of a girl. This will also tie in with our limited colour palette, as it will obviously be mostly black and white. We will try to only get the shadow of the girl, and not the actual face so no make-up will be needed. As for body language, we will be trying out a few different poses to see which will fit best with our advertisement and CD cover. The reason I chose the image above was because I like the body language and the pose in the image, it's simple but effective and I think an image like this would fit well. We will be trying mostly long shot's and medium shot's (if took at a beach, it will definitely be a long shot). 

I think that, because of the overall style we are going for, limited text would be best. We do not want to give the audience too much to read as they may get bored and turn away from it. We thought the band name, album title, a few song names that are included on the album and a line from a magazine review would be just enough to have an effect on the audience. The review line was taken from an actual magazine review of the band and we believe it is a particularly good line to show how good the band are, therefore we put the line in colour. As it is the only coloured piece of text on the advertisement, we feel this makes it stand out and is going to grab the readers attention. Obviously the band name and album title are the largest pieces of text on the page (being the masthead) so this keeps a traditional feel to the advertisement. 

We have gone with a few different fonts which we feel work well together. The band name and album title are in the band's 'signature' font; the album review line and song names are in Times New Roman font, quite a simple font but has an old-style twist to it, which we felt matched the style. The word 'including' has been put in an old, calligraphy style font which we found online. We felt that if we didn't put this word in a completely different style font, it would blend in with the rest of the text. It was not so much that we wanted the word to particularly stand out, just we feel the dash of that different font has an impact on the advertisement and kind of breaks the whole page up (in a good way!) 

As for the overall layout of the advertisement, we've gone for quite a traditional, simple choice with the image being the central focus point. We feel that when a reader looks at an advertisement such as this one, they would be more likely to actually stop and look at it if the image was the focus point, and not so much if there was a small image somewhere on the page, surrounded by text. 

Feedback of my blog so far...

Here is the feedback that I have recieved from classmates on my blog so far, which I am quite pleased with! 

PITCH - Roles, Camera shot's, Costume

Costume

After discussion with my group we decided on the roles and responsibilities of the project. Between the three of us we decided that I would take the position of the Producer, Stacey would take position of the Director and Alex would take charge of sound and lighting: We also decided to share the responsibility of editing the video. 

In terms of camera shots, we decided we would like to use a variation throughout the video. We decided we would like to use medium shots as that way we would get the full effect of the location; we want to also use close-ups as we feel this will portray the emotion of the song and convey it well to the audience and we want to try and get some tracking shots in the video as we feel that this keep the video moving at a steady pace and, like the medium shots, show off the location and background. 

The style of costume we are going for is shown in the above image. We feel that, to go with the music and location, we would like to the band to wear traditional English clothing such as waistcoats, possibly tweed materials/patterns, etc. 

PITCH - Images of location

Herrington Country Park

Here are a few images of the fields in which we hope to shoot some of our music video!

PITCH - Plot, Characters, Location

Herrington Country Park

For our music video we decided to go for partly a countryside feel and partly a documentary feel. Some of the shots in the video are going to be taken in a location similar to the above, Herrington Country Park. We have a few places in mind for these shots such as Mowbray Park, Tunstal Hill and a few place in Seaham. We intend to visit these places and get some test shots to see which location films the best! The reason we intend to go with the countryside feel is to match the style of music which is quite folk and old-style. The documentary style of the music video is to break the video up so it does not get repetative. We plan on filming the band out and about, without performing or acting for the camera, just being themselves, "messing about". We hope this will make the video more realistic and fun! Other ideas we have had include filming the band in an empty venue (possibly Bar One, a bar in the city centre), performing the song and perhaps then filming other people on their way to see the band. We hope to be able to include all three of these ideas somehow!

If these ideas do not turn out as expected when filming the video, we have thought out a back up storyline which will include a girl and some kind of relationship storyline which would also work with another song we have in mind.

The genre for our video, we feel, is a kind of 'indie/folk' style as this is the style of music we have went for.

PITCH - Moodboard

Moodboard

Me and my group came up with a few ideas of what the style of our music video could be (which was shown in earlier posts as the Inspirational Texts). I made this moodboard to show some of the aspects of the music video such as location, costume, sound, etc. The next few posts will be the pitch for our video! 



And another

Laura Marling - Rambling Man

Another idea my group came up with was to have some kind of story line for the video. We thought it could make the video more interesting to watch if there was something else going on other than just the band performing; we thought it would give the audience something to think about.

I chose this video as an inspirational text as I believe it does not only show how a story line can work well in a video, but it also shows how simplicity, in terms of editing, can also be a good thing in music videos.

Throughout the video, there are many extreme close-ups used and at times a slow motion effect can be spotted. However, when it comes to the transitions from one clip to another, it is often a plain and simple straight cut. Often when watching music videos you can get many 'fades', 'dissolves' or 'wipes' to cut from one clip to another which I sometimes think looks a little 'too much'. With the genre of music and the style of the video we are going for, I think simple could be best.

An inspirational text

Mumford and Sons - Winter Winds

For my first inspirational text I have chosen the video for the Mumford and Sons song, Winter Winds. I feel the overall style of the video is perfect for the style of music we have chosen. 

Throughout the video we see the use of tracking shots as the camera follows the band wandering about which I feel keeps the video fluid. We also see a few close-up's of the band members as they are singing along to the song. In parts of the video we cut to footage of the band performing for an audience which is quite a contrast to the mellow, slow paced footage of the band walking along the road and walking through the fields. Slow motion effect is also used throughout the video which, along with the tracking shots, I think keeps the video flowing at a steady pace. For our own video, we are looking at finding a location similar to the one in this video and have a few places in mind. We quite like the footage of the fields which seems to fit into a colour scheme for the video of beige's, brown's and tan's: This colour scheme would also fit our style of music well. As the costumes also seem to fit with this colour scheme, I think every aspect of the video complements each other and seems to work together nicely. 

First things first

When Will She Find Home - Reckoner

After reading the briefs, I decided I'd like to try my hand at making a music video! Me and two others are teaming up for this piece and will hopefully be able to pull together something good.

After a little discussion, we decided it would be more original to go for a more local, 'unheard of' band. This way we would also be able to have the actual band feature in the video which would make it more realistic and professional. The band we are looking at go by the name of Reckoner; the band consists of two members, one of which is a friend of mine.
You can watch a recording of 'When Will She Find Home' by Reckoner, just posted above or you can hear some of their recordings here -

http://soundcloud.com/reckoner55

"How have you progressed from AS to A2?"

 I passed AS Media Studies with a grade C. My media studies coursework entailed creating an original music magazine from scratch - a front cover, a contents page and a double page spread (which is shown above.)

In terms of digital technology, I feel my skills have massively progressed in the past year. On starting the year, I had to quickly grasp the use of Photoshop and the huge amount of tools that came with it! I feel I achieved this quite quickly and I now feel comfortable and confident enough to use the software in any aspect of my work that I can. In regards to digital technology this year, I am very keen to learn how to record and edit videos. This is a completely different task to the work I was doing last year and I look forward to possessing this skill for any time I may need it in the future!