Evaluation - Charlotte Baker

 Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?


Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?




Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?



 Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Youtube:
Throughout all stages of our project, we were using Youtube as a guide. When planning our initial research for our music video, we used to it to pick up on typical conventions of our genre by watching different types of music videos. Not only did we use it to watch professional music videos, but previous students had used it to upload their projects which helped us enormously as we were able to watch these and create a list of strengths and weaknesses that we could include and avoid. During our editing stage, I used youtube to find a tutorial on how to cut a picture using Final cut. Without Youtube I would never have been able to do this and our pictures may not have looked so professional. In addition, Youtube enabled us to upload our rough cut and final cut of our music video which meant we could put it onto our blog.

Blogger:
To keep on track of all the preliminary research we did for our research we used Blogger, which is an online blog. We were able to record whatever we had ideas on during the lesson, such as the research on professional or student videos, update it by putting any tutorials we used, put evaluations of mise-en-scene etc. We found it extremely useful as we were able to look back to what we had written in the case of forgetting an idea we had had in one lesson and were able to monitor other ideas from the rest of the group which had not been voiced out loud within the lessons. This helped us to then create our final cut and our ancillary products as we had noted down all of our evaluations and research.

Photoshop:
Using photoshop helped us to edit our photos that we took for our ancillary products to make them look more professional. This was done by changing the colours of the front cover of the digipak so that the picture looked more airbrushed, this then made it fit in with the conventional digipak front cover of R&B genre.

Final Cut:
Final cut played a gigantic part in the making of our music video. We were able to edit all of our clips with this technology and it also enabled us to change the green screen background using colour corrector, cut clips that had not been shot to the standard we'd hoped and were able to edit and filter to different clips together to create abstract backgrounds.

Green Screen and cutting:
By watching a tutorial on youtube I was able to learn how to change the green screen background by changing certain settings such as the chroma key. By doing this it made created great effects within our music video as we used various abstract backgrounds. i also learned by watching a tutorial that I could cut a picture and fit it back within the screen without distorting the picture. I was able to do this through the cut tool on Final Cut.

Camera and tripod:
We were given a video camera to film our shots on for our music video by the college. As i do not own one of these it was a new experience to film with it and I learnt very simple things such as switching it off, starting the recording and watching back the videos we had already filmed. We were also given a tripod which helped me to realise just how important it is to keep your camera steady; if this is not done so the shot looks very unstable and unprofessional! I learnt how to set it up and adjust it to help us film at different angles. 

Evaluation - Keri Meadows

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



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



Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

 

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

Throughout the project of creating our music video and 2 products, we have used a variety of different technology. We have used it to research into real products and music genre conventions to understand how and why these products are made in the way they are. We have also used it to plan and produce our music video, digipack and magazine advert, and lastly to show our work to the audience and make an evaluation on all 3 products.

Blogger

During our journey of making our 3 products, we have been able to use Blogger to record all the research, planning, work and evaluations we have done through blog posts to create and look back on our music video and 2 ancillary products. This allowed us to store our work in one place and present it neatly to an audience who are interested to discover how we came up with our 3 products. It is an easy way for us to easily access our work to look back on as blogger is a free site that has an easy and simple layout with posts clearly layed out and easy to make.

Youtube

During our research stage of finding out more on music videos in different genres, we used Youtube to watch student music videos and real music videos. We analysed genre conventions, micro elements and macro elements used to create their work, and try to understand how they affect the audience. Being able to view other people’s work helped us to understand the how and why music videos are made the way they are, and inspired us with our own ideas for our music video. Youtube was also useful while we were editing our music video to give us tutorials when we needed help with Final with things like editing backgrounds into the green screen and cropping footage.

PowerPoint and SlideShare

For our research we also used PowerPoints to record information we researched, and present it in a simple and tidy manner for us and an audience to understand clearly if we were to present it. Powerpoint has also helped us to present our information in an interesting way to keep an audience engaged by using different slide designs, transitions between slides and using different colours. It has come in useful to use as we could bring up different and detailed points on separate slides, with the ability to use pictures and add hyperlinks to videos to illustrate and back them up. The internet site SlideShare was of great help to enable us to upload our powerpoints to our blog for us and the audience to easily find and look at.  

Flickr

When making blog posts on Blogger, sometimes we had the problem of photo’s/images being too big to upload through Blogger, so we used the website Flickr to upload big photo’s/images such as our digipack and magazine advert. Photos could then be easily shared to our blog posts by embedding the photos and pasting the link into a blog post. This gave us high quality images in good size and format.

Google

By using the search engine ‘Google,’ we were able to easily find specific research or websites we were looking for by just typing it in the search box and scanning through the suggestions. Google also provides many images that we needed of things such as other artists, album covers and logo’s of websites or other companies to support our points made in our blog posts. We also found Google maps helpful to take a closer look at locations we could film in, and then used the Mac to take a snap shot picture of the location, so we could post it on our blog and use it to illustrate our points on why we choose the location for our music video.

Twitter

When it comes to using another person’s song, the artist who owns the rights to the song must give permission first to allow anyone to use it for copyright reasons. By using twitter, we were able to contact Rita Ora by sending her a message to ask her if we could use her song to create a music video with it. Many famous artists from around the world have a Twitter account as a way to advertise to fans and allow them to follow their activity as a means to make the fans feel more involved with them. Twitter makes it easier for people to get hold of the artists.

Camcorder and tripod

Without the camcorder, there would be no music video. The camcorder we used was a HD camera to shoot high quality footage to make our music video look professional. It also has a light weight to enable us to easily carry and move it for shots like handheld movement or pans. All the footage then saves on an SD card which we could easily put into the computer and copy the footage onto Final Cut. However, there was the risk of the battery dying during filming which could have interfered with our work. Thankfully this did not happen, and there were spare batteries for the camcorder incase this was the case.

To make our work even better, we used a tripod to get neat and steady shots. This was one of the technologies we used that were not digital, but it was very helpful to make our camera work look professional by attaching a screw mechanism onto the camera, and then locking that into place on the tripod. It held the camera very still for basic camera shots, and then produced smooth movement for things like dolly shots when moving the top part of the tripod that the camera was attached to.

Green screen  

This was the first time that any of us had used the green screen before. Before using it, we watched a tutorial on YouTube and asked someone who had used it before to demonstrate to us on how to use it. After finding this out, we starting filming with the green screen with lights either side of it to ensure the footage would not be too dark and would work properly when editing images in the background in Final Cut. After filming the green screen footage and reaching the editing stage, we found many problems with editing images into the background. In some shots there are green outlines left around the artist that we could not remove properly and sometimes the images in the background came through in patches on the artist that were also hard to get rid of. The green screen was the most problematic aspect we faced when producing our 3 products.

Fairy Lights

In part of our music video, we used footage of pink and blue coloured lights by placing it on top of green screen footage. We used the camcorder to zoom in on the lights, and we recorded them against the green screen so we could add a black background to make the lights stand out. They contributed as a background of our idea on using lights and colours for our music video.

Camera

For the Digipack and magazine advert, we used a HD digital camera to take high quality photos to give a professional look to these products. Having high quality photos would also allow us to blow up the images to bigger sizes without the image pixelating (the magazine advert would rely on camera quality as it has to be made into A4 size or even bigger if it were printed on a poster). It is also easy to transfer photos from the camera to the computer, as the photos store on an SD card like the camcorder which can be easily inserted into the computer via an SD card slot.

Final Cut

This program is very important to actually put the footage for our music video together, but put it together in an interesting format be cutting it to the beat of the music. It allows anyone to take pieces of footage and manipulate them in my many ways using things from transitions, effects, text etc. In our music video, we used these 2 tools a lot to change the appearance of our work: colour corrector and chroma key. Colour corrector allowed us to change our clips to many different colours to make them vivid and engaging, and chroma key was used to put backgrounds onto green screen footage. We also used a transition called dissolve a lot as it softly faded from one clip to another to add to the soft tone of the sad R’n’B we worked with. However, this software isn’t the best for creating professional green screen backgrounds, so this affected our music video’s quality. Despite this, what was helpful about it compared to other software like Windows Movie Maker, is that you could have a lot more timelines to add more footage without having to move the parts you had already edited. This saved us some time to complete our work, but we still struggled for time in the end due to sudden idea changes during the project.

Photoshop

Photoshop was another major program we used to make our Digipack and magazine advert. Like Final Cut, it gives you lots of different tools and effects to manipulate or create images to create professional and eye-catching pieces of work. For our Digipack and magazine advert, we used it to change the colour of photos into bright colours, sepia and black and white. We also created designs on top of the photos for both products by using an easy line tool to create our Andy Warhol inspired look with the square shapes. Photoshop has a great range of different text fonts to suit different moods, genres or ideas. We choose a bold and modern font to connote the artist’s youth and vibrant personality to attract our teenage/young adult audience. It also has advantages with the way it allows you to use as many layers as needed. If something goes wrong during designing, the layer can simply be deleted and not affect the overall image. Having used it before, I was confident with using it so time was not wasted trying to find out how to work it.

Word

During our research, we used word to type down research or write our evaluations on our 3 products before putting them on the blog. This was useful to use to create first drafts and enable us to easily transfer our work to memory sticks or by e-mail to work on. Word also has many tools to change the presentation of written work to make it more formal, engaging and understandable. These include tools such as underline, bold, different text formats and the ability to include images to illustrate points made.

Prezi

Lastly, I used the website Prezi to present part of my evaluation on the music video and ancillary products in an interesting and easy format for the audience to understand. Prezi is a website where you can create brainstorms and mind maps of ideas and thoughts in a digital way; you can change the designs of them to appeal to the audience the information you’re presenting. I had never used this software before then, but I quickly learnt the tricks and tools to using the software by asking someone who has used it before. I think the website is very useful for presenting information professionally.

Evaluation: Jessica Knights

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

The song we chose for our Music Video is Rita Ora’s Song ‘Love and War. This song categorises into the genre of R’n’B. Therefore, we had to incorporate and take into account the genre of conventions to use in our own music video, our Album digipak and magazine advert.

Green Screen

As this shot was filmed using the green screen it enabled us to play around until we chose our desired background. We found that in a lot of R’n’B music videos, the location is set around an urban area, and a lot include brick walls as a background. Therefore, we used this same idea to use a brick wall as a genre convention for our R’n’B music video.


Furthermore, using the Green screen challenges some R’n’B music videos as they tend to be seen as realistic something for the listener and audience to relate to. Therefore, the use of our green screen may challenge this as the abstract appearance may be seen as unusual.

In addition, in the following screen grab, there is clear indication that we had created this shot using the green screen and there is still green surrounding the artist. Although, we tried our best with final cut we couldn’t completely get rid of the green in all of the shots. Obviously, this doesn’t help our music video doesn’t appear as professional as this challenges the use of green screen in music videos.

Also, our use of Green screen may be a challenge to professional music videos due to the line down the left hand side of the screen. When filming our music video we didn't notice the light out of the window behind the Green screen, which the camera obviously picked up on. Therefore, this doesn't help the professional appearance of our music video.

Colour corrector and filters

When looking into the conventional use of colour correction and filters within other media products, we realised that by using these technique made it appear more original and professional when watched. We wanted to create an interesting and engaging music video, and using bright colours, and editing them with jump cuts helps to keep the audience watching.

Although this, the genre conventions of R'n'B may challenge our music video due to the use of the colour corrector. For instance when using the colour corrector on Final Cut the artists face changed colour as well as the background. The use of colour on the artists face isn't very realistic in terms of everyday life, and a specific convention and ideas surrounding of R'n'B normally is about events, relationships in the artist's life.

As well as colour corrector which is a dominant feature in our music video, we also included a sepia tone, which we placed over a narrative section, to show the artist is reminiscing about a previous moment of her relationship. This shot is also is edited using an overlay technique to help further present this idea.


Split screens

Andy Warhol's Art

Although we used the inspiration from Andy Warhol to create this look, using split screen and colour correction to make each of the colour background this may slightly challenge the forms of R'n'B conventions as it is not realistic in life. However, this experimental techniques creates an original look to our music video, making it appealing and visually interesting to the audience's eye. Although this slightly develops some music video conventions, for instance we have seen in Rihanna's music video that a projection is used to change colour, although our colours are bold and not as subtle as Rihanna's music video, we are using and creating a similar idea.

Furthermore, this shot includes a close-up direct address to the camera and audience is an significant genre conventions in music videos as it helps the audience relate to the artist.

We have also used the split screen technique to show the narrative and between the the two artist's love and hate relationship.

Lip sync

A large percentage of music videos contain the artists performing/acting and then the music is added through editing software and lip synced to a more professional sound quality which we used this convention in our own music video. Although most of our lip syncing clips are a convention of professional music videos, we have included some lip syncing of the artist which her singing starts fine but speeds up and doesn’t precisely fit in with the words of the music, therefore, this challenges the conventions of music videos.

Jump cuts

From watching other R’n’B music videos we noticed that a lot of cuts were used to fit in with the fast and dominant tempo of the music. Therefore, we chose to use a series of jump cuts throughout our music video so that the visuals can fit in with the genre of music and the fast accented beats which each cut fell on (in some sections). By using this technique it keeps the audience eyes engaged. When completing the rough cut we realised that the more we used the jump cuts, and the more precise they fell on the accented notes made the music video appear more professional.


Camera Angles

Another convention of most music video genres was to use a variety of shot and angle types. For instance we used close-up, long shot, mid-shot, high angle shots etc. The most frequent use of shots were the mid-shots as we wanted the artist to be the  main focus as well as being able to see background interest. This allowed the music video to look more professional and interesting as there is more variety to the video.


 Direct address

From researching professional and student videos we noticed that a dominant convention of most music genres included direct address as the creators used a range of close-ups of the main artist. Therefore, we took this into account when producing our own music video as included close-ups we believe that by using direct address helps the audience relate to the artist. Furthermore we used this convention in all three of our products: the music video, album digi-pak and the magazine advert, as we wanted the main artist to be the focus of our products and by using close-ups of the artist directly addressing the camera can help the audience to relate to the artist.



 Depth of field

For the majority of our music video we used large depth of field so that the audience can get a sense of where the artist is situated and get a feel of where and who the artist is. However, we did include small depth of field when creating the abstract background.

Taken from Ellie Goulding's 'Lights'

This shot challenges some R'n'B music videos as we sometimes see the location set in an urban area whereas we used a green screen and filmed and added an abstract background. Although this, we were influenced by Ellie Goulding's 'Lights' music video as she was filmed with lights behind, but filmed with a small depth of field to enable only focus on to the artist. I liked this technique a lot as it was abstract but different and made an unusual look. As we didn't have big lights to use behind Leksi we filmed her part against the green screen, then filmed some fairy lights using small depth of field against the green screen added a black background and placed it behind Leksi in Final cut. Overall, I think that this technique works well as the background goes well with the tempo and upbeat of the R'n'B song.

 Relationship between the lyrics and the visuals

Although most of our music video is extremely abstract particularly due to the use of the backgrounds and use of colour corrector. We felt we should add a small narrative to show that there is some relationship between the two artists. We used the title ‘Love and War’ and the lyrics as a representation to how we perceived the song. We believed that the use of the lyrics and the title 'Love and War' suggested that the song was about the artists love hate relationship and it is repeated that they 'don't wanna fight anymore'. By using the artist and showing the ups and downs of their relationship we were able to use a narrative that can be seen as a convention in some but not all music videos. By using this split screen we can show both sides of their relationship the 'love' side and 'war'. For instance, we saw a similar love, hate relationship in Rihanna’s music video 'Love the way you lie' (screen shots from her music video are below).

 Location

Abstract background using the Green screen

As we mainly used an abstract setting/background for a large percentage of our music video, we wanted to use a variety of visuals. Therefore, we thought that we shouldn’t use the green screen for all of our music video, but show a realistic setting, especially for the narrative scenes as we wanted a realistic and imaginable approach that the audience can relate to. However, as we chose a woodland/ nature setting this may challenge R’n’B conventions as they tend to be set in an urban area. Although, this we have noticed that in some R’n’B music videos where the mood of the artist is sad and subdued they tend to be situated in an isolated location (e.g a beach). Therefore, we wanted to create a similar impression and appearance for our own artist.

Clothing

Screen shot taken from our music video showing the clothing we used for our artists.

J Cole (male artist in the song)

We chose our male artist to wear casual clothes yet appropriate to fit into the genre of R'n'B we told him to wear jeans, leather jacket, t-shirt, a large cap and 'bling' as we found that all of these were examples of clothing that we found in R'n'B music videos which is a specific style to what J. Cole wears. Luckily he already had large glasses which we used as they are in fashion at the moment and fit in with the genre conventions. All these items of clothing fit in with today’s society which helps the audience relate to the artists.

Rita Ora

Furthermore, when researching Rita Ora's clothing, we came accross this photo taken from her music video 'How we do Party'.  Rita Ora is wearing a lot of denim including denim shorts and a denim jacket, this is a casual but stylish style which we too wanted our artist to wear. By wearing items of clothing like denim can help the audience to relate to the artist as it is an everyday item, and young people, those of her target audience, can look up to her as a role model. Therefore, we chose our female artist 'Leksi' to wear a similar style dress sense to that of Rita Ora.

 Magazine advert

From looking at professional artist's magazine adverts such as Ellie Goulding's 'Lights'. We can see that the main conventions of an album magazine advert  that must be included are...

• The artist's name that can easily be read and is clearly seen.
• The Album name which must be in an easy to read font and size.
• Picture of the album so that when people want to and go to purchase the artist's CD they can easily recognise the Digipak.
• Reviews and star rating to help to promote the album.
• Date when the album is released.

Our magazine advert:

 I believe that our magazine advert follows most of the conventions of a magazine advert, as it is bold and attractive for customers and followers of the artist. By using the spilt screen, Andy Warhol influence helps make the magazine advert stand out as it is original and different from using just a photo. However, our magazine advert may challenge magazine adverts as our advert doesn't include an album release date, which would not be helpful to customers if they wish to purchase the album as the album may not yet be out when seen.

Album Digipak

From looking at professional artist's digipak  and from looking at Katy Perry's Digipak album 'Teenage Dream' we can see that specific genre conventions are used. For example....

• Highly edited photos of the artist to help capture a style for the audience.
• Motifs which have been used throughout their work. (e.g how the artist is portrayed through their image, the use of backgrounds, font etc.) In Katy Perry's digipak we can see that her albums are quite abstract and brightly colour which helps to attract a particular target audience (e.g young teenagers)
• The Album name
• The artists name
• Barcode for use when purchasing
• Producer's company
• Track list

Our Album Digipak:

I feel that our album digipak definitely includes many significant Digipak genre conventions. For instance, we have included lots of edited photos of the main female artist to help the audience relate to the artist. By using a range and editing each image helps make the Digipak look more professional as it follows the same conventions as seen in real album digipaks. We included a track list, which we made up, but we related the track names to the typical R'n'B conventions refering to the artist's life events, the ups and downs of relationships etc. 





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






3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

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

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