Evaluation Question 4

Question 4
What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After our cinema viewing and a lively reaction from the audience, we watched the rest of our year groups music video and left to get our feedback. We asked two people to give feedback on what they thought of our music video which included the genre of music we chose and on our artist. This feedback was really important to us as the people in our year group were the main group of people that we wanted to target, and that we wanted to relate to the artist. We wanted to know if we would have to change anything that didn't make sense to our audience or if a part of our music video didn't match the genre or artists look. 


Drew & Einas - Feedback 

Drew said that he could not find a fault to our video, which makes me feel as though we picked our target audience perfectly and we provided a music video, and artist to match our target audience perfectly. Our core audience was for younger people around the age of 15-25. We definitely wanted our product to be relatable and this is why we picked this age range.
Einas said she liked the lights in our video which was great to hear, as that was the focal point of our synergy and it did not go unnoticed. Our blurred lights was something that we really wanted our audience to pick up on and our audience showed that they did.

Drew also made a comment about what he thought our ancillary products should look like and he thought we should have a dark background, which shows a link to our music video, and with our artist looking out towards the camera. I think all of our digipaks are different in some way, but we all kept our lights synergy constant and they all have the dark background that the audience thought they would see. 
Einas' comment about the lights is also something we all took into consideration and we kept the lights as a constant part of our synergy in different ways.

For the front cover, I wanted to show the bokeh lights which was our focal point of synergy, also I wanted to use a picture where the lights were obvious on our artist. There is also a  dark shadow and quite a dark background on the front and back of the digipak.

For the inside of the digipak, I changed the colour scheme slightly with a gradient and focused on light colours inside of actual lights. I thought it would have the element of surprise for the fans who would actually buy the album and see a different side of the artist. 

For the advert, I kept the colour palette slightly the same as the inside cover for continuity. 

Ancillary Feedback

After showing an audience member, of our age range, my ancillary products, I asked for her opinion and feedback and here is what she said.

I was happiest that she picked up on why I changed the colour palette on the inside of the digipak. She said the work looked professional which was also great to hear along with the obvious link between the album cover, and album name.

Evaluation Question 3

Question 3

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

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisement)?

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 1

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

                   

Evaluation Question 1 from olamide95

Finished Ancillary Work

It's taken forever, and I have changed my mind around 100 times, but I think I've finally finished all my ancillary work which includes the inside and outside of the digipak, and also the advert.

Outside 

I definitely wanted to use our same theme of bokeh lights for my front cover. I used one of the photos from our projection shoot for the album cover. In photoshop, I simply changed the levels and saturation of the picture and brightened up the picture. I didn't really retouch the picture as I wanted Molly to look natural instead of false and made up. I looked for different fonts and I couldn't find any that I thought went with Molly as an artist, or with the genre of music that she was representing. I checked FontBook and found 'Avenir Next' which had a variety of sizes within the font and I chose the thinnest one. I thought for a long time about what photo I would use for the back and I didn't think any of them looked appropriate so I decided to continue the lights on the back as well. 

 Inside

I changed my mind about the inside many times and I thought I wanted to keep the lights inside for a sense of continuity but I thought it would be too specific and boring. I searched for how to do a colour gradient on photoshop and I chose different light colours for the inside. I was heavily influenced by Ellie Goulding's 'Halcyon Days' album which also had a gradient all over. My opacity is low so you can still see Molly clearly and I kept the writing white on the CD also.

 Advert

I used slightly the same colour palette from the inside of the album cover for the advert and the same picture for continuity. I felt as though the gradient was a great alternative for a simple colour background, or a picture that I would have to crop, colour and resize. I used the same font that I had been using from the album and I carried on using white for the font colour. There is a twitter and Facebook icon to show the social networks she is on, and a reminder to show the audience they can download the album on iTunes. 

Photoshop FAILS

I've have loads of ideas for the inside panel of the digipak and I've spent this lesson trying to clone Molly, which has been pretty hard because I don't have a picture solely of the background we used. I tried different techniques that I searched up on Google but it didn't work. I wanted to use the full length pictures we have of Molly but it has been really difficult. 

I found a picture of the background and got three pictures of Molly just to see how cheesy it looks... and this has slightly put my off the idea... I tried to get the opacity down and change the colour and lighting of the background. I also tired to make sure that Molly didn't look stretched out or make the image look distorted in any way but... I'm not too sure I'll keep this for the digipak.

Advert Planning

Here is the advert that I made in the lesson today (don't judge the drawing, I don't do art). I had some reviews below the album cover and then the tour dates beside them and then Rebecca told me it has to be one or the other so I got rid of the magazine reviews and put down social network icons there instead. As far as the colours I'll use for the advert background, I'm not sure what I'll use as of yet, but I'll be using the same font as the album cover and the same font colour.

Ancillary Planning

We took some photos in the photography studio, and we got some light photos from google, printed them on acetate and projected them onto the wall behind Molly. I liked this photo the most and wanted to use this as it was the closest to my album cover plan.

I changed the levels on the photo to make the lights stand out more and I tried out a font which I had an idea about. I like the way the picture looks and I think it makes the picture stronger but I'm not sure about the font and I want to try out more and maybe get a better picture of her. Also I want to put the album title 'Lights' in the bottom right of the picture. I'm still thinking... This is so complicated :( I'll keep you posted 

Cinema Screening!

We went to the screening of everyone's music video and I'm so happy with the way ours turned out! It was so weird seeing our names up on the big screen and seeing all of our hard work but I really enjoyed it and everybody's reactions were amazing. We got some feedback from other students and we will shortly be uploading those soon.

Digipak Design

Today we made very rough ideas of what our final digipak will look like. Here are my front and back panels. However, we haven't yet decided what colour palette we are going to use so I left the colours blank.

Here are my inside panels and hopefully, unless I change my mind, this is what the outcome will look like.

Last Years Digipak

Last year our group did 'Britney Spears - Hit Me Baby One More Time'  and this was my digipak for it.

We forgot about taking pictures when we were recording our video so we had to use screen grabs from the video (which wont be happening this time) and then I had to edit Sophie on to it. The CD circle is soo small and it doesn't even have a whole in the middle :')... I've learned so much, this is a proud moment.

Previous Ancillary Work

Here are some examples of good work from previous students.

The person who created this advert for 'Nathan Miller - I Am Electropop' seems to have followed conventions very well. I like how his colour palette is very simple and definitely fits in with the electropop genre. The green, purple and white stand out very nicely against each other and against the black background. He has appropriate critics for the genre and also shows singles from the album.The use of the social networks also shows how modern the artist and genre are.

I think the album cover is very good and l think although he has used a heavy filter on the picture, the effect fits with the genre and makes the picture look better. However I don't the back part of the cover simply because of the colour he chose. I think if he kept the back black as well, there would have been better continuity and looked more professional.

I think the inside is the weakest out of the three and it looks like he ran out of time and couldn't finish it in time :(. The CD is designed well, as it has the same pattern as the back of the album cover, but it is too small for the case which doesn't really happen. The other side is really empty and there isn't much that he has put in there. The picture is quite cheesy and the pose and effect around it really doesn't work for the genre.

This digipak for 'Y.Shocker - Life Of My Memories' is very genre specific and works very well. The grey colour palette works very well with his grey clothes in his cover photo. The font also works very well and is good for the genre. However, the lines that are on the front make it look cluttered and a bit cheesy, and the CD has no design on it and is too small for the case.

The advert, like the digipak, is genre specific and has featuring artists that are in around the same genre as the artist. The lines still take away from how professional the advert looks, and the writing is quite basic and doesn't really tell us much.

Research - Digipaks

Today we looked at different digipaks and examples of what to do and what not to do when it comes to making them. We then had a go at making our own on Photoshop to see how we would make our own and to familiarise ourselves with the programme.

Here is my attempt at a digipak and... well... Rebecca said she likes it so i'm just going to agree with her.
My artists name is 'Ka$$andra' and her album is called 'Fuego' (which means Fire in spanish, hence the flames (synergy).

Hopefully our own album cover will be better than this... but photoshop was annoying me so I got a bit frustrated and couldn't really do much, and the pictures were terrible quality. 

Overall Do's & Dont's

Do's & Dont's of Digipaks

In this lesson we saw examples of good and really really bad work. Hopefully, we wont be the group that is shown as an example of bad work next year. We learned about the Do's & Dont's of digipaks and what we should and shouldn't do when working on our digipaks.

We need to make sure we have our artists face in the center, and they will be the biggest thing on the digipak instead of the artists name and  make sure the fonts that we use can be easily read and stand out against the background. We also need to have all the conventions of a digipak, like barcodes, the record company logo, the name of the artist and album title, website and any relevant promotional stickers or labels. Also, when we do come around to writing on digipak and pick our colours, we need to stick to no more than three colours and two fonts, otherwise it'll look a bit... well... tacky. There I said it.

We shouldn't go crazy with photoshop effects and fonts, especially ones that don't fit in with our genre, and just keep things simple. Also, if an image doesn't fit in by itself, we can't stretch it out so it will fit otherwise the picture ends up pixelated and grainy, also we need to make sure not to use irrelevant images just to fill up any empty spaces.

I can't wait to start on our digipak and HOPEFULLY they're worthy of the Hall Of Fame! 

Production - We did it! Music Video is Complete

After painful nights filming, crazy arguments and more, we finally finished the music video….

Production - Trevor Helping Us With Filters

We asked Trevor for some help because there was a light that kept appearing in the top corner of the shot, so we were looking for a filter or a way to try and hide this light so it doesn't appear. This is what he said… 

We were able to solve this problem!

Production - Teacher Feedback

Teacher Feedback

We got Marisa to give us some feedback on the final video that we produced so far. Here is what she had to say...

Update

Whats been going on?

We had to re-shoot last Sunday, and that was our last day of filming (YAY).
So at last, we had finished. Then the editing process started... I don't think any of us were prepared for it to be as long as it has been because we underestimated our own song. I didn't realise how long the song actually is. It's around 4 minutes in total, which isn't really a long time, but for a music video and editing, it feel like 20 years. We decided to cut the end of it which was really just an instrumental anyway, because it wasn't really needed and it helped us out with time. We added a couple of filters and effects that we didn't have before to make our video look a bit more professional and better looking. We've all been helping out and doing our part for editing which is a big help to us all and our teachers have been giving us really helpful feedback to make our video better. We've had a couple of scares (mild heart attacks) because yesterday our work almost got deleted due to a small touch of the video drive, but thankfully our work is okay and I can't wait to see everyone's work in the cinema soon. Our lighting has been our main problem throughout this whole process because our music video is in the night time, so we knew it would be difficult to have it well lit throughout the whole thing. The filter on the camera also kept us back a bit as we shot with it on by accident but the new shots in our music video is okay. I've really enjoyed everything so far and (don't tell them I said this) I really like the company I've been in and I'm glad I was put with them. Kinda.

Filming Overall Personal Review

Production - Filter issues whilst filming

Whist filming we had come across a variety of issues and besides the lighting, we also realised that we had the ND filter on which essentially makes our footage have  an orangey wash on it. So when we reviewed our footage some of our shots were different colours. This was evidently an issue as none of the shots would match.

The 'filter issue' occurred on two occassions whilst filming this meant that out of the 7 days only 5 days of filming were worthy of putting in to our final product. You can see this orange glow in our footage and we are attempting to colour correct this.