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

The new media technologies I used in creation of my final product were final cut and the sony a1 camera. I also used youtube, photoshop, blogger and my mobile phone.

Before even planning we had to set up a blog page and I had never used blogger before so when starting out I had to have a mess around with the dashboard and see what was what. I needed a blog to post all my information etc onto. I felt once I got used to this it was very simple to use.

 

Firstly when planning I took the time to take a look at a few videos on the following website. www.youtube.com. This is a website in which you can watch pretty much anything within reason.  

I used this site to take a look at videos and for my audience research. Youtube enabled me to watch a video and then find out what sex and age ranged watched this video the most. It would give me a rough idea of what my target audience was. It really helped with choosing the right song and planning out my music video.  I felt youtube is a simple way to look at different videos and determine what is best, it is free of charge and easy to use.

The next part of my project was to record the music video. This was using the Sony A1 Camera which I had never used before so this was very new to me. Personally I believe this camera was fantastic the quality and the simplicity of it was very surprising. After a few test shots I was ready to use it. The one downfall about me when I was using the software was that whilst I was zooming in I was perhaps zooming too far and made it jump slightly.

Along with the filming I also had to use a tripod for steadiness and I had never used one before. I didn’t like the tripod for some reason I couldn’t get it to pan properly and when adjusting the legs of the tripod it took me a while to get the right balance therefore some of my shots look a little off.

Once I had done the filming I had to use a brand new editing software called final cut pro. This took a little bit of getting used to especially with adding effects into the video. I felt that if I had took time towards the beginning of the year just to take a look at final pro then perhaps I wouldn’t of had to spend so much time once I had recorded the video to have a play around.

With final cut pro you had the opportunity to change the sequence of what you had recorded and play it in whatever order you would like too. It enabled you to edit the filming and add effects to make it look like what a proper music video would look like. You could cut out bits, replace bits, change the colour, lighting. It is just a fantastic software to use.

I had used photoshop before therefore this was not a problem for me, the only problem with photoshop is that it is nice to take time to look at things however because I spent a lot of time on the video editing I felt I didn’t have a lot of time to explore photoshop therefore I feel my poster and digi pak wasn’t as good as it should of been. Without photoshop however I could not of created my poster or digi pak.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

My audience feedback was very positive. I selected people from my age range who immediately knew what the story was behind the music video. They also gave me positive feedback to the black and while theme. They thought the editing worked, and the fact that I used only one actor worked well.

I also decided to do a small questionnaire, the questionnaire just had 6 questions in it and it was open for discussion as well as closed questions. I managed to get responses from 22 people. These 22 people were from my target audience and 9 of which were female and 13 were male. I showed them my music video one by one and allowed them to go back to bits or watch it as many times as they wanted.
The questions that I asked were:
On a scale of 1-10 what would you rate my music video as?
What do you think of the whole black and white theme?
What do you think of the idea of using just one actor?
Should I have tried to change my location?
Did you understand that the bits in colour were actual time and the black and white theme was past?
What are the best and worst bits about this music video?

For the first question 18 out of the 22 people I asked gave me 8 out of 10. They also said in conversation they like the way the video speeds up when the music speeds up. One of my responses was only a 5 as they said it didn't quite fit the genre of music and another response was an 11. I was very happy with this result as 8 out of 10 is a high score for my first ever time at creating a music video.

For the second question it was open for discussion I left the space on my questionnaire for people to add their own feedback. Unfortunately for the second question I pretty much only got one word answers or short sentences. I had 5 people just write good, 8 people just saying they like it and the rest just putting very good or it worked well. I should of perhaps broke that question down to get the best possible feedback I could of got.

For the next question 20 out of the 22 people I asked all said I should have used more than one actor just for the guitar and instruments. When I asked them to expand on it they said that the idea of one actor is good however in a rock music video (soft and heavy metal) they use several people. The other two people said they enjoyed the one actor being the only person in the video as it didn't confuse them. This feedback made me realise I should of been more organised and had more actors on standby and a back up plan. I think if I had the chance I would add different people into the video.

The next question about changing my location I already new that I should of tried to however I asked this question just to work out whether it did wreck my video or not. 13 of the people I asked said yes I should of perhaps thought to film in different locations. 4 of them 13 said that even in my garden or in a different room would of broke it down slightly. 9 of the people I asked said no to that question when speaking to one of the person after the questionnaire she said that she believes that the video is about memory and present and if so why should I change the location if its about memories. I do take this criticism on board and realise that it could of made a big difference if I did change location but at the time I thought the shots were enough and I enjoyed what I did film.

I felt with the next question I should of rephrased it, I had to explain to the audience what it meant. Basically I wanted to know if people understood the reason why I put colour into this video even though its mainly black and white. All of my responses were yes we did know it was to symbolise past and present. I was happy with that because that is what I wanted my audience to realise when watching this video.

The last question I asked about the best and worst bits again got one word responses and short sentences. 6 out of the 22 people said the best part of the video is the way I edited it. 1 person said the best part was the way I ended the video by him walking out of the door. 10 people said they liked the black and white theme, and the rest just said it was good, or it all flowed. For the worst bits 1 person did say that the syncing was slightly out at parts and 10 people said that when my actor was miming the retro style was a bit too much. The rest of the people just made comments about it slightly jumping in places and that I should have used more actors.

Overall I am very happy with the feedback I got and if I had another chance I would definitely take it on board and create an even better video.

Finally for my audience feedback I also posted it on facebook and looked at what responses I received for that.

Unfortunately I didn't much constructive feedback apart from it was good or I should be proud however I was still happy with the feedback I got.












 

I have learned that with all this feedback I perhaps need to consider my change of location and actors within my music video apart from that I am very happy with what I produced.

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

My music video doesn't really link in with the digi pak and poster that I did the colour schemes are different, however when analysing other products the music video doesn't really relate to the digi pak and poster at all. The poster sometimes doesn't even relate to the digi pak however there is a significance between all three that tells you what poster is for what. For example the image is the same on the digi pak and poster and its the same person from the music video. 

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

My music video lasted for just over 4 minutes which relates to other music videos. It featured a solo actor. For the genre I was doing my actor fitted the video very well this is because in this genre the standard male has medium/ long hair and is generally wearing a rocky t-shirt and trousers.  I tried my best to relate my music video to the mise en scene used in other music videos.

For the music video I tried to relate it with other music videos in that genre however I wanted to make it original also. I decided when analysing the lyrics in my head that the sense of loneliness came into my mind. Therefore I took a look at some music videos that imply a sense of loneliness and there were lots of music videos which included perhaps cheating and better looking women getting the man or vicer versa. I decided implying this sort of issues within a music video can become offensive especially when they make a person “geeky” or “ugly.” I feel this is not fair on today’s society especially when everybody is different and I feel these sort of videos give people more ammunition. Therefore I wanted to set an example, make people feel sorry for my actor and perhaps put them into the same situation and relate to their issues. My music video relates to other music videos in the same genre due to the fact that it includes a story behind the video, miming and instruments. So when it came to this I decided to include all these main features when recording this video.

When recording this music video I did it by choosing my locations and playing the particular part of the song loudly in the background whilst filming the particular scenes. Then I got rid of the music in the background and replaced it with a proper track. This is exactly what the producers do when creating the music videos.

When choosing how I wanted to film this music video I used the black and white themes, I decided to use black and white to empathise a past memory. Whilst there were some scenes that were in colour this was to show what is happening now. In some music videos that I have watched in which they use the same technique to highlight this fact it has worked quite well, however I feel I should have filmed these scenes with a brighter light to highlight it even more. I believe that some audiences could get slightly confused and just think I simply forgot about making it black and white.

When it came the camera, I wanted to make it steady and capture the little detail. When watching other music videos I noticed they did this to. They took their scene and made it perfect without anything going wrong. In a couple of my scenes there is a plug extension in the background I was so angry with myself for not noticing as I tried to get everything perfect. I felt that this was a letdown and I have did think everything was perfect and in today’s society nobody makes mistakes like that.

The props I used in my music video where all there because I wanted them there (apart from the extension plug.) In music videos the props mainly used for the genre rock is a guitar so therefore I had to include one of these. If I had more time or thought more clearly I would have liked to include drums and perhaps a proper mic but then I thought I would need more actors and for the story behind my video it had to include just one person.

If I had more time I would have edited a lot better than what I did I feel the editing is good however at some points it jumps and also in some parts the syncing is out which in a music video does not happen. For someone that has never created a music video before or the software I feel this music video is very satisfactory.

Overall when challenging forms and conventions of real media products I did decide to be more creative and more original. I knew this would be a tough challenge to take on however as much as my video was satisfactory I have realised that infact it relates to other music videos in the same genre for example only having one actor, however the retro 90's sort of editing is something that I cannot relate to in todays society so perhaps I should of considered a different editing route.

When listening to my music video yes it is a rock song however it is not heavy metal it is more soft rock. Therefore I looked at some posters which the band Shinedown originally used and some other bands. The band Shinedown do stick with the dark colours for the background of their poster, they also use the big white writing to show what the title of the band is. I then looked at some more softer rock artists as this single isn't as heavy metal as the band are. The use of a black background was very popular there too, I decided this had to be the type of background that I use.

I then thought to myself the song that I have used has a sense of depression in it and I didn't want the poster to give out the wrong impression on what perhaps the true meaning of the song is. I thought this song can be classed as a love song and as it only had one person in the music video I thought that maybe I could include a little bit of a different genre within my poster. So I took a look at some Adele music posters as the type of music she does can relate to depression and loneliness.

This image is the main focus to the poster and I wanted to try and create the same sort of photo. When I found the perfect shot it did take me a while to think where to place this image. As we can tell in the three posters the image is the main focus and in the center of the page. With most music posters this is the case. However when looking back at other Shinedown posters I realised this isn't the case.







This poster is where I got my main idea from. The image placed at the top with the green strikes going through. I decided to place my image at the top of the screen and and play around with some features which is how I came up with the stars around my image. I feel just like the poster to the left my image also stands out.





When thinking about what font to use I decided to input the bold looking font and the white colour used by the band Shinedown just for my information part. I wanted to make the title of the band and the song name a little more fancy. I played around with what I could do and used the features around me. The only problem was that I couldn't find any posters that used the fancy sort of writing it was all bold and big to stand out. I felt this part let me down a bit however I decided to take the risk and make it more original and my own. The colours used on my poster all match, I got the colours from the T-shirt that my artist is wearing. When analysing other products this is what they all seem to do.

I inputted an image of the itunes logo as I did mention Itunes within my music poster and again when researching they all include the i tunes logo. The website that I put in the bottom left hand corner was there because this how others create the poster, even though I changed a few conventions within my music poster I had to stick with a few somewhere down the line.

For my digipak I stuck to the same image and font schemes used within my music poster this is because the research that I did for the band shinedown did the same thing. I wanted to include the same image and font also to be consistent. I also wanted it to somehow related to the way shinedown publicise their products.





Within my digipak I also included on the back page a barcode which relates to digipaks in shops and also what you find within the digipak or on the CD. I also had a lyric page which again is what you find and a thank you page. Finally I also had a page that tells you about the producer and directer. Again all this you will find within a digipak so I followed the simple conventions.

Digipak final

                                                            

Crow and Butterfly music cover

Music video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljrj2bQvhmw