Final Evaluation Question 4.

 

Final Evaluation Question 1.

Evaluation Question 1 on Prezi

Final Evaluation Question 2.

Final Evaluation Question 3.

Draft for the fourth evaluation question.

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

Throughout each of the stages technology has been vital. We have been able to communicate our ideas to our target audience and as a pair through the blog and also Twitter which we both have on easy access to - Bank on his Blackberry and me on my iPod Touch through smartphone applications. This has allowed us to constantly communicating and planning things like filming.

Blogger was the basis of our research stage because it acted as a board of all our ideas and sources of inspiration from which we could eliminate ideas that weren't as good as others. Our teachers could also keep up-to-date with where we were and give us feedback on our work. It also allowed Bank and me to share ideas. We were also able to do this with Twitter which we used rather than texting because it is free and as its on the internet it is possible to insert links and photos.

While planning filming and the filming trip we used technology constantly. We book the hotel and train tickets online which was very easy and quick. The Travelodge website was very user-friendly as it listed all the hotels in London, price and the distance from tube stations which allowed us to find a cheap hotel not too far from the centre of London. Booking the train tickets online made it cheaper than buying it on the day and allowed us to reserve seats. It was also less time consuming on the day of the travelling as we had only had to wait for them to print. While in London we used the Google Maps application on Bank's phone if we got lost. We also used a TubeMap application on my iPod Touch to chose our tube routes. This make getting round London easier and meant if we were to get lost we could easily find our way again. We also used the weather app. on my iPod to check the weather in the morning to dress appropriately. Throughout the trip Bank and I took photographs on the camera and on his Blackberry which we used as a behind the scenes video.

To film we used a FujiFilm SLR camera which had the option to shoot in HD this made our shots higher quality which we decided would make the video look more professional. However the HD clips were larger than shooting in the normal format so we had to invest in two memory cards to ensure we had enough space to shoot everything we needed both in London and filming in the country. We then used a memory card reader to put the footage on to the computer. This made the transfer a lot quicker than transferring the clips directly from the camera. Just in case we backed up all our work and all the footage on an external hard-drive and kept the clips on the memory card so we had two files if anything happened to either the hard-drive or the memory card.

For the draft we used Windows Movie Maker which we found out did not create a very effective video because of the amount of footage we had taken the program was struggling and ran very slowly. So for the final video we decided to use Adobe Premiere Elements on the school computers which are faster than our home computers/laptops. Premiere Elements gave us a lot more choice when it came to editing effects than Movie Maker so it was a much better program to use. However we had to convert our footage into MPEG files as the program could not read the MOV files. We used a video converter program to do this which created good quality files however it took a while to convert everything as we had a lot of footage. Once we had done this we had to program Premiere Elements to work from the external hard-drive which has more space than the school computers this made the program run a lot quicker and more effectively. In Premiere Elements we used the black & white effect, brightness increase, fading and ghosting to enhance our shots. We had not used Premiere Elements before so it took a while to get used to the program and figure out how to do things, however we soon picked it up and found that if we rendered the clips every few minutes it would run quicker. We saved regularly to back-up the video.

For my digipak and poster I used the same camera which creates high quality images which I then manipulated and enhanced in Adobe Photoshop Elements. After experimenting with the techniques in this program I was able to create the effect I wanted. I have used this program before so I was confident using it and found it easy to use. I also used Illustrator program to create my record company logo. I drew a picture which I then imported and edited it to attach it to text. I had not used this before so it took a while to understand and create an effective outcome.

We used technology throughout every stage and it would not be possible to have done anything without it. However we could have been more efficient if we had understood the technology better, for example when first starting to use Premiere Elements if we had known it was problems with the drive space rather than the files then we could have saved time by starting out with using the program off the external hard-drive.

Draft for the second evaluation question.

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

To make the combination of the music video and my ancillary texts effective, I used branding across all the products so that it is easily identifiable to the audience. As we used a concept, I had to ensure that I had aspects of the concept in the music video and digipak and poster. I achieved this by using similar images and location in the digipak as we had in the music video.

For example as the concept was country vs city I had to portray this in my digipak and poster.  In the digipak I used 2 photographs of London in locations that featured in the music video which I manipulated using photoshop to create a gloomy, black & white image which contrasted with the more vibrant photographs of the countryside. This effectively showed the isolated, depressing city and freedom of the countryside which was the concept of the music video. For the front cover I created an piece that also was effective in showing the concept with the countryside above ground in colour contrasted well with the dark, gritty look of the underground map which act as the roots of the tree. The underground section takes up more of the image to show that city is feels more dominant which links to the music video where Katie looks depressed and isolated in city. Although I think I was successful in creating an effective digipak that showed the concept, my poster was not as effective in showing the concept because it did not show the city side of it. Although I like the Dear Photograph effect with Katie and I think it would be eye-catching in a magazine as the photograph takes up most of the page which draws in the audience's eye, I think it would have been more effective to have used the front cover of the digipak as this clearly shows the concept. It is also easier for the audience to identify as The Empty Crowd's work because the photograph of Katie is on the inside pages of the digipak so people who identified the link would already have the album. Whereas I should be trying to attract people who do not have the album yet so to make it more effective as an advertisement I should use the same image as the front cover of the album because then the audience get the image in their heads and will be reminded of it if they saw it in a shop, Amazon or iTunes. As our band are part of the mainstream pop-rock genre it is quite unusual not to have the band selling their album with a picture of themselves so the poster could be more effective if the audience could identify the album through the artwork.

Overall, I think I have use the concept well to link the products together. I feel I have managed to reflect the concept of the music video in the digipak through the use of photography and manipulation in photoshop which linked well to the editing of the music video.

Draft for the third evaluation question.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In all stages of planning, filming and post production we have been given feedback from our teachers about what would work and what might not be as effective as we would like. This helped form an idea of what aspects to use in our music video and digipak/poster. For example, after our draft it was pointed out to us that to make our music video more interesting and in order for the audience to understand the narrative we had to have some connection to the lyrics through performance e.g. lip-syncing. We took on this advice and looked back over our research and decided that this was the best thing to do to make it look more professional and like something OneRepublic would produce.

However we were aware that our teachers were not our target audience so we also asked our friends to comment on our draft. Their opinion matched our teachers comments and thought it would look better and they could connect with the video more if someone was lip-syncing. Also Katie, who was also in our video, commented it would look better if there was something to break up the repetition of country then city shots. From this feedback we then decided to include performance in the video as more people than not said it would improve the video.

When we had finished the music video we uploaded in on to YouTube from there we published it on several different sites to get audience feedback. We posted it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and our own blog and invited people to comment and welcomed constructive criticism.

It was good to post it on something like Tumblr because we got feedback from people outside our circle of friends who were still part of our target audience. We received a lot of positive feedback about our London shots and the fact we used these shots in black & white. They felt the London location made it look more professional and reminded them off mainstream pop video like OneRepublic. They also liked how we used a lot of the iconic London landmarks which is good because it shows that we have appealed to our target audience by shooting in London.

We also received a few negative comments about it. Some people commented that it was cloudy in the horse shots which confused them as the rest of the country shots had been in sunshine. Also some people did not understand the connection with Katie and Bank until the end and think it would have been better to explain it right at the beginning. However we found that some people liked that you don't know the two are connected until the end as its a twist in the story. Some also said that it doesn't matter that the connection between the two characters were not obvious from the start because a lot music videos cut between narrative and performance with no connection between the band and characters in the story. So opinions are divided on the details of the narrative but most of the comments have been positive and our target audience really liked the dark London shots vs the bright green country side shots.

Draft for first evaluation question.

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

Using Goodwin’s theory about key features of music videos we have made an illustration type music video where we have illustrated the meaning of the lyrics through the visuals. By doing this we have created a connection between the lyrics and visuals which allows the audience to understand story behind the song which makes and keeps them interested. For the genre of music we chose illustration music videos are most common because they need to appeal to wide, mainstream audience. Large pop-rock bands don’t often make a disjuncture video for example because it has more connection with indie, alternative bands who appeal to a more niche audience. As well as creating a relationship between the lyrics and visuals we connected the music and visuals through the use of Bank lip-syncing to give the video elements of performance. It is more common than not to have performance integrated into the narrative of the music video so we followed this convention even though to begin with we were planning on just having a narrative. Having watched Snow Patrol’s Open Your Eyes we looked into shooting in one shot as well as not including performance however we decided that the one shot would be too difficult to achieve in the city where we had no control over the passers-by and traffic.

Later we also decided to use performance because the narrative did not relate enough to the lyrics to allow the audience to understand why Katie walking around in the city and country. It also gave us the chance to give the audience something else to look at as it is quite a long song and the shots of Katie in the country and city started to feel repetitive. Once we had decided to use performance we included the singer as much as possible which is a convention that most mainstream pop bands follow to show the star image which the record companies like because it appeals to the audience and fans will be draw to the music video if the band feature often. We decided to just have Bank singing as the lead singer and not include the two other band members or instruments to show the connection between Bank and Katie in the narrative. Like OneRepublic and a lot of other mainstream bands we have used the typical convention of lots of close-up shots of the lead singer.

Mulvey’s theory of the female image in media applies to our music video because Katie was a large feature. Mulvey states that in media females are seen as the object and the males as the subject this could be applied to our music video as Bank looks out at the audience and through the lip-syncing has a voice whereas Katie is passive and is viewed as an object rather than a subject.

Goodwin also states that iconography is used in music videos to portray the genre of the band. Mainstream pop will show their star image through designer brands and popular high-end gadgets. For example in OneRepublic’s Say (All I Need), Ryan Tedder the lead singer is seen wearing Lacoste trainers in a close-up shot of his feet, this appeals to the audience as it shows they are fashionable and up-to-date with what is “cool” and popular. 

We have used iconography in terms of mise-en-scene to show that our band The Empty Crowd and Bank as the lead singer is part of the mainstream pop genre by using a shot of his BlackBerry.

We followed the typical conventions of an illustration music video by linking the shots and the added effects to the music. For example at the beginning the song has quite a heavy beat so we just used city shots. Then when the music became softer we introduced the country shots.

Also having decided to include performance aspects in the video we followed the typical convention of cross cutting in between narrative and performance like most pop music videos do. Nearly all of OneRepublic's video have some aspect of performance, lip-syncing or the band playing their instruments.

Levi-Strauss' theory of binary opposites applies to our music video due to the contrast of the dark, gloomy city location and bright, green, colourful countryside. Also through the moods of Katie isolation and depression in the city and happiness and freedom in the country.

In other ways we have used existing conventions by creating a concept that we have carried through from the music video to the digipak and poster. A lot of bands in all different genres use the idea of concept. We decided to use a concept which would be clear to the audience and allow them to identify the music video and digipak/poster were connected and belonged to the same band.

We were initially inspired by Coldplay who used the concept of the French Revolution for their album "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends" Their concept is shown in their music video through the mise-en-scene; costume of the band, especially Chris' military style jacket, visuals and the use of the tricolour colour scheme. The album artwork used the iconic image of the Revolution, Delacroix's painting of "Liberty Leading the People". Also their music video of Viva La Vida featured Coldplay performing the song on a warped, blurry backdrop of the same painting.
This clearly shows the audience the linking of the concept across their products so we decided to use a concept of city vs country. We had decided to shoot in London as in a lot of mainstream the locations are iconic e.g. Paris, London, New York, Hollywood etc. to attract the audience as it shows the celebrity, luxury and traveling on tour lifestyle of bands and artists. We were also inspired by OneRepublic's music video Say (All I Need) which is shot in Paris and the narrative involves the band walking around the streets with lots of establishing shots of the iconic landmarks in Paris.

As I wanted to show the country vs city concept clearly in my digipak to the audience I used photography of the city and countryside next to each other and manipulated the images to make the contrast clear.

As I was using photography as the main feature of my digipak and poster I decided to use the idea of polaroid photos by using a white border round the pages like on Charlie Simpsons' Young Pilgrim album artwork.

I decided very early on that I did not want any image of the band in the digipak or on the poster which is quite unusual for a mainstream  pop-rock band however not that unusuals for a concept album - like Coldplay who do not feature in their album Viva La Vida. Therefore I decided the concept should be the main feature with photography portraying this.

I was inspired by Oasis' cover of "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?". I thought the shot of the ordinary street was really effective and eye-catching and I decided to change it to suit our concept of loneliness in the city - to give this effect I ensure there was no obvious subject of the photograph and with the long almost empty street the onlooker feels distant and detatched. I developed this further by putting it in black & white to show the gritty, lifeless feel of the city which contrasts with the green, colour photographs of the country. This also links my digipak to the style of the music video that we edited to have the city shots in black & white and the country in colour.

For my front cover I wanted to create an image that really showed the idea of the city vs country concept. I was inspired by the silhouette of the tree on OneRepublic's Dreaming Out Loud album. I googled tree silhouettes to see what shape would be best and was further inspired by this result.

For the country pages I wanted the coutryside more appealing than the city images. In the draft I simply used photographs without a subject which did not make it appealing and gave the onlooker the same distant feeling as the city photos which did not show the concept enough. To bring this across I used the idea of the blog Dear Photograph because it makes the subject more interesting as there is an obvious connection between the photograph and the location and suggests a past and a present.

Final Music Video.

Editing techniques.

Editing Techinques

Problems with Editing

For the editing part of our Music Video, we have been confronted with a big problem. All of our video clips which we shot with our own camera shoots in MOV files, and when we tried to import this into Adobe Premiere but we were unsuccessful because the software doesn't support this. Originally, we were going to use iMovie on the eMac, but we found that it was taking quite a long time to actually import the videos onto there because of the hardware of the eMac was older and slower than the PCs.


To overcome this problem we decided to convert the files in to MPEGs which we could use on Adobe Premiere although this was successful at first because of the amount of clips we had it slowed down my user area. I had to ask for more space on my area which initial made it quicker, however we found that during saving, loading files and rendering the clips the program was very slow and crashed from time to time.

We then decided to use the eMac with the MPEG files which although thought would be compatible with the eMac and quicker to load than the MOV files the eMac did not recognise Eleanor's external hard drive. We then put all the clips on to a memory card and used a card reader to upload them onto the eMac. This worked fine however the clips would not load which we discovered was due to the eMac not being compatible with the newer MPEG format because its an older system.

Therefore we have needed to convert the MOV files again to MPEG files with a DVD pal format which we will use in Adobe Premiere. To overcome the issues with the program running too slowly we have saved the scratch disk files in Premiere Elements to Eleanor's hard drive which has a bigger memory than our user areas. This should speed things up because the clip files, rendering files, scratch disk files and whole project will run off the external hard drive.

Hopefully once our files have been converted we can start using Adobe Premiere Elements more quickly.

Filming Bank lip-syncing.

We have re-filmed the lip syncing shots with Bank and feel that it works better. We also added a modern looking chair to show some context as the shots we did with Henry looked too bare. We kept the rest of the mise-en-scene very simple and made the lighting work so both sides of Bank's face were lit up.

We shot Bank lip-syncing to the whole song - standing up against the wall and sitting down to add some variation and we are going to cut between shots of him lip-syncing and the narrative. To link him to the narrative we created some shots with him with a photograph of Katie both on his phone and a printed picture. We are going to see what looks and works best and use that in the final edit of our music video.

It took a while to get the shots right and for Bank to get used to being in front of the camera but we are quite pleased with the outcome and think it works better as he looks like he is into and really singing the music.

Improvements made to my final digipak and poster.

For my final digipak I changed the style and layout from the CD pull-out leaflet that I made for the draft. I completely changed the style of the front cover as the main comment was that it did not reflect the concept enough. I decided to do a more art-like front artwork with a bright colourful countryside section that was dominated by the darker, underground city section. This is the original drawing before I edited it - I wanted the underground section to be darker and more threatening so it contrasted more with the soft colour of the countryside so I made the city section black and white to also link to the music video.

I used watercolour for the countryside to create a soft light colour and used a sponge for the tree to create a different texture to the grass and sky. I think it also gives it a simple almost childlike look which contrasts well with the harsh tones of the roots underground. I then scanned the image in and edited it in photoshop to create this final image. As well as editing the underground section I had to smooth the edge between the underground and countryside section to make it look like it was part of the same image.

I then added the text and enhance the effects so that it could be easily read.

For my draft I had not created a record company logo for Red Rose Records so I had to create one that looked professional and unique. For this I used illustrator - I drew a simple outline of a rose which then coloured in on illustrator.

I then chose a joined script font that joined the letters together which created a more fleunt logo. I decided it looked better with all the words joined together because there are a lot of Rs in the company name. I then drew some leaves to add to the captial R to create the idea of a stem and placed the rose at the end. I chose a dark green for the text to contrast with the bright red of the rose and to link to the country theme.

I also changed the country photographs to include Katie as the main subject to give it more of an appeal and to show the concept better. I used the idea of Dear Photograph with a photograph with in a photograph.

 

Final Poster.

Final Digipak.

Filming our singer.

Today we filmed with Henry who is posing as our singer. We filmed in my room against a blank wall and used three lamps to light it up so there wasn't obvious shadows. We played the song so Henry could sing along however it took quite a few shots for Henry to relax singing in front of the camera.

Although we got some go shots and varied the camera angle we felt that Henry was uncomfortable which showed on the footage so we have decided to use Bank as the singer and to link the shots of him to the narrative by filming him looking at his phone with photographs of London and Katie. We will film the shots with Bank in the same location as it looked quite effective but we might add a simple, modern looking chair for him to sit on to give it some context and we need to improve the lighting so the light is equal on both sides of Bank's face.

Development of Front Cover Picture.

I have decided that it would be best to draw most of the front cover as it will be complicated to manipulate the tube map in photoshop and it might not look as artistic. Also I have decided to include writing of the names of the tube stations in the style of Bold & Noble's work. They use simple fonts of name places to create prints of countries and cities which is really effective.

Although Bold & Noble use clear fonts and the emphasis is on making it readable, I think I will wear the text away slightly so it has a faded, aged look which will link to the concept and also not take the focus too much off the overall picture.

Change In Music Video

After we recieved feedbck for our music video, we have decided that it would be more effective to have a male singer lip-syncing the song. We have already chosen our lip-syncer, his name is Henry, although he doesn't look like a member of OneRepublic, we can always change that by changing his appearance, clothes, hair etc.

We are als going to try and intergrate the shots of him in with the narrative by using pictures of him with Katie so the audience understand that the two people are connected.

Re-thinking the panoramic image in the centre.

After experimenting with cutting out the individual landmark, I have realised that it won't quite look right creating a montage with landmarks to create a skyline effect.

It doesn't look right because the buildings do not have the same angle of light which creates shadows in different directions. Also it looks too cut out and moulded together to be effective it would have to look more natural.

The only way it could work would is if I did it as a silhouette of the buildings and trees. However I will then lose the contrast between black and white/ colour and the gritty look of the city.

So instead for the centre I am going to go back the individual photograph per page idea.

Image for Front Cover.

For the front cover of my digipak, I am thinking of showing the city vs country concept in a different way. Taking the idea of a tree and its roots underground I am going to connect the country with the city by incorportating the tube map and making the lines the roots of the tree.

I will have to draw the map out so the lines are going in the direction I want, I also think I will make it simpler and remove some of the station names. I'm not sure yet whether I want the map in colour or not so I am going to have to create a more detailed mock-up to see what it looks like with and without colour and the station names.

This is the mock-up sketch of my idea. I think I would have the underground darker and faded but more dominant taking up 2 thirds of the picture, and the country skyline brighter and in colour. However I'm going to have to make a more detailed developed mock-up to see what works best.