Evaluation Question 4

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

We started to use technology before we even began constructing our media products; using the Internet as an aid to our research and planning.

We first used the Internet (and mainly YouTube) to search for the song that we wanted to make a music video for. This was a very long process and we managed to find the right song only due to YouTube's feature of related videos. This feature was extremely useful as it enabled us to find songs that we had never heard of or listened to before, which was exactly what we wanted to find. This meant that we could use this unknown song to construct our own visual interpretation of the song without having preconceived ideas from an original familiar video.

During the construction of the 2 ancillary tasks we used the Internet to download fonts from dafont.com, which was very useful as it meant that we were not restricted to the default fonts on the Apple Mac desktop computer that we were using, as they were all quite plain and did not fit with the style of the brand we were creating.

Finally we used search engines and YouTube to search for tutorials that would help us when using Final Cut Express (for example we learnt how to use the Chroma Key Effect), as none of my group had ever used the software before.

To use the Chroma Keyer Effect, Claire highlighted the clip that she wanted to put the effect on. She pressed the effects button then dropped down the menu to Video Filters and chose Key --> Chroma Keyer. She clicked on the eye dropper tool and selected the colour we wanted to stay, in our case the red rose. She clicked the invert button, then selected the clip again and clicked Alt + Shift and dragged the clip up to the next level on the timeline in Final Cut Express. To finish the effect she had to click the clip on top of the original clip and then click the invert button again. Finally she had to desaturate the clip again and now the clip is is black and white with only the red rose in colour.

Final Cut Express was the program that Claire and Jack used to edit our music video. If we did not have access to this program we would have had to use a simpler program that would not have given us the range of effects that it gave us e.g. cross dissolves, desaturate and chroma keyer. The program also enabled us to edit very tightly using clips that were split seconds long without affecting the quality of the video. The feature that we liked and used the most in our music video was speeding up or slowing down our clips from real time. This gave us a lot of opportunity to create tension and dramatic effects throughout the video, for example the gate to the graveyard opening and closing, and of Claire picking petals of the rose in the shadows.

To get footage for our music video we filmed using Sony Handy-Cams. They aided us during filming as we used it with a tripod for some shots that needed a steady hand, making the video look more professional. They also enabled us to film more shaky shots by having a strap on the side, meaning that we could run with it in our hand to film and not have to worry about dropping or breaking it. We could use the camera whilst it was being charged, so we could always film at any time and not worry about the battery life.

To take photos that we could use in our 2 ancillary tasks, I used my own personal camera: a Sony Cyber-Shot 12 mega pixel digital camera. As it has such a high mega pixel number, it meant that any photos that I took would come out in a high quality, useful for me when I worked on the digipak and magazine advert. The camera also has many different settings that I could use, for example I could shoot in black and white, sepia and negative, or even change the focus of the lens to shallow or deep. This setting was extremely useful in one photo, where I shot Claire's hand and the rose dangling from it in focus whilst the background was not in focus (photo below). This meant that I could get rid of the background easier in Photoshop.

I used Adobe Photoshop in the construction of our magazine advertisement and digipak.

This program was essential to the final appearance of our ancillary tasks. I frequently used the history brush tool, which creates the same effect as chroma keyer does in Final Cut Express by keeping one part of the image in colour. You can do this by desaturating the photo and then using the history brush tool to colour the selected parts of the image back in. I used this tool on the magazine advert where the rose is kept in colour whilst the rest of the photo is in black and white.

Another feature that I loved in Photoshop was the amount of filter tools there were. These enabledme to change the apearence of the images, for example I could make an image look like film grain, be wrapped in plastic or look like a mosaic. the filter tool I most frequently used was the 'poster edges' tool, which gave the images a bolder look and they became more outlined.

An example of how I used the history brush tool and the poster edges filter tool is below:

The final piece of media technology that we used was Blogger.com. We used this website to write up, post images/slideshows/videos of our coursework. I found this to be much more useful than using pen and paper, as it gives us the opportunity to instantly update our work, post images and videos that would otherwise have to be printed out or transferred to a CD or DVD.

Finally, I used Slideshare and Scribd to display my answers to the first two evaluation questions. This gave me the opportunity to display my work in different ways other than just text and images.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Getting feedback from audiences was vital in the process of creating our video and ancillary tasks, as we used the criticism to improve upon the final products.

Music Video Feedback

The first time we received feedback for our video was after a screening of our rough cut in front of our class and teacher. After the screening, they all wrote down on paper what elements they liked and disliked about our video, and what they thought we could improve upon.

The main piece of feedback we received was to sort out the many gaps still left in the video, which we did. Most people liked the idea of the theme of death and romance, and the argument scene with many cuts was received well. from our peers.

The next time we received any feedback was after we showed our final cut to a small group of friends and fellow media students. This meant that we could get an opinion on the technical side of the music video from the media students and a general opinion of the video from our friends.

This video was filmed and edited by myself, Jack, Claire and Charlotte as a group effort.

Untitled from Alysha Bennett on Vimeo.

Feedback Positives:

- Our friends seemed to really like the theme and storyline of the video, in particular the use of black and white.

- They really enjoyed the use of cross dissolves, as they found it made the scenes flow nicely together.

- The editing corresponded with pace of the music e.g. running away to the drum beat, and a hand crashing down.

Feedback Negatives:

- Lighting in the suicide scene is lighter as she is getting drink from the cupboard, which ruins the gloomy setting.

- We could have shown more scenes from the graveyard as it is only briefly included at the beginning and end.

In addition to interviewing our friends and peers on camera, Jack posted our video onto his FaceBook account and asked his friends for any comments or feedback they had. These were the responses:

Overall, we found that the feedback we received from our friends and fellow media students about our music video was positive in terms of the storyline, ideas for shots and general theme, but slightly less positive about the execution of the idea. This is seen from the comments we got about the amount of times we included the graveyard in any scenes and the fact that the lighting changes in one of our scenes from shot to shot. It is small editing problems like this that I think, if improved, would make our video much better quality.

Ancillary Task Feedback

To get feedback for our ancillary tasks as well as our video, we asked the people who we interviewed to fill out a booklet of their thoughts about the 2 print products.

Here is what they said about our magazine advertisement:

In my opinion I feel that the way there are logos and representations of other companies on the magazine give it a very realisitic feel. Alongside his I would also say that the use of colours make the adertisement stand out. The text is very easy to read and the advert gives a lot of information without using a mass amount of text, keeping it simple was a very good idea.

The magazine advert goes well with the CD cover. I like the way both images are quite dark and shady. I like the way the reviews lie (ie. star ratings) are below the images.

The magazine advert is similar to the CD cover, which creates synergy within the campaign. The images are well edited and the text is easy on the eye.

The layout is very professinal and the colours, fonts and lighting match the digipak creating a strong house theme. The professional touches such as the itunes and hmv logo work very well.

I like the combination of the dark background, suble images + light, clear, easy to read writing.

Beautiful images, the upside down rose is distinctive and symbolic.

Maybe pictures better aligned.

Here is what they said about our digipak:

The digipak almost tells a story through the pictures used, I would say this is very good as it clearly builds from the music video. Again the use of logos make it look realistic and credible. It is kept very simple but at the same time very eye catching for the buyers. It definatley looks like an album to buy and keep.

I like the saturation - could poss edit further?

The dark imagery gives a hint as to the lyrical themes of the video. The sense of foreboding is conveyed through the open gates and tree shapes.

Dark contrast makes it seem very gloomy and mysterious. I like the barcode positioned at the bottom right.

The gothic theme indicates what the genre of the music will be.

The use of dark low key ighting is amazing, the saturation of the pictures and lighting emphasise the message and tone of your vdeo. The front image works really well as it is a scene from the video and entices viewers as it does not give too much away. Also love the continual symbolism created by the rose

I like how dramatic the pictures are. The front picture has mysterious elements that draws in audiences.

The lighting makes it very atmospheric. The open gate draws you into the picture making you wonder what will happen next.

Atmospheric - sets a sombre tone. Pictues are excellent, perhaps bottom right could have zoomend in on graves a bit more to distinguish it from bottom left.

Evaluation Question 2

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

q2

Evaluation Question 1

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

Forms and Conventions

View more presentations from alyshalouise93.

Comparison To Other Media Products

To see how our digipak fitted in in today's market, I put it next to 4 other current albums in shops now. As you can see, I think that our digipak blends in nicely with the current titles on the market, but different enough to stand out on a shelf and leap out at potential buyers.

4 Panels of the Digipak

As it stands, this is our final digipak. However I may still do some final tweaks to it at some point soon.

Final Cut

Untitled from Jack Jarvie on Vimeo.

Risk Assessment

The Editing Process

As Claire and Jack have been doing the editing whilst myself and Charlotte are designing and creating the ancillary tasks, we have had almost no technical input to the final video, only inputting into creative ideas and the actual filming of the video.
So to illustrate all the hard work that they have been putting in, here are a few links to their work on editing!

Claire's Editing Blog Posts
Jack's Editing Blog Posts

Video Editing Update

Whilst myself and Charlotte have been working on the ancillary tasks of the digipak and magazine advert, Claire and Jack have been busily editing our video. I am no genius at using Final Cut Express but here are a few examples of their editing!







I know that one of the main things that our group as a whole wants is to work out how to get just one part of a clip in colour: in our case we want that to be the red rose.
Through watching exemplar work from last year we knew that this was possible and we also knew that we had to use the chroma keyer tools. However, although we followed instructions from our classmates and various instructions from the internet, nothing was happening to our clip. Eventually, Claire came across this helpful tutorial from YouTube, and we finally were able to create the effect on our own video!

Final Magazine Advert

I may still tweak with some elements of this advert, but as it stands, this is our final magazine advert!

Role Chart

Initial Feedback

In order to get this feedback we played our rough cut on a big screen in front of our classmates and teacher. They wrote down what they thought was good about it, and what they thought could be improved.




The main piece of feedback that came through from our classmates and teacher was that we had too many gaps in the video, which we were definitely aware of before the screening! Most people thought that the argument scene were we used a lot of fast cuts was well edited, however our teacher noticed that we had broken the 180 degree rule, something which we have to fix in the next 2 weeks.
The main scene that everyone seemed to like was the very end scene at the graveyard which we desaturated to make black and white. The feedback was that the imagery went well with the tone and pace of the music and story at that point. The scene where we created a shadow so we can see the girl pick petals of the rose went down well with our teacher, who said that we need to incorporate the rose into the video more.

Rough Cut

Making The Back of the Digipak

For the back of our digipak, I picked this photo that I took during filming as I think that it signifies everything that our video is about: heartbreak and destruction.
I started by using the magic wand tool to cut away the background to the image, and then dropped the opacity of the remaining image to around 30%, so it was faded but still visible. I decided to use a black background to in keep with my previous work on the digipak and of course the magazine advert so there is a distinct brand style.

I then duplicated this image until the entire canvas was filled with torn up roses. The idea was to create 'a bed of roses', which signifies love but can also signify death, for example with the saying, 'you've made your bed now lie in it.'

I used the same font that I used for the front of the digpak and on the magazine advert to keep the distinct brand identity so it can run throughout our 3 pieces of work.

Finally in order to make this back panel look as professional as possible, I needed to add in a barcode and logo's of the contributors of the album, like the record company and the band themselves.

Making The Front of the Digipak

For the front cover of our digipak we played about with all the images that we had taken throughout filming, but I found that most of our images had too much going on it them and would be confusing to our audience. We settled on this image as it is extremely simple and very striking.

All I had to do to improve this image was to bring the contrast up and the brightness down, and finally use the eraser tool (which I dropped the opacity of) to create a blurred edge around the photo so it blends into the black background.

Finally I simply added the name and artist of our album in small writing with the same font as I used on our magazine advert. I like that the title is small and at the bottom of the front panel as otherwise it would distract from the main striking image.

Magazine Advert Development

I selected a different font from the main text on the page to write the reviews of the album in. I made sure that it was not too different from the original font, and in the same handwriting-like style. I used the star rating as a simple way of rating the album.

I then took a photo of Claire that I had taken during one of our filming sessions, and pasted it into my photoshop document.

I used the magic wand and quick selection tools to cut out the background from around Claire's face, and then dropped the transparency to around 70%. I think this this creates a better eerie effect than if the image has maximum capacity as it looks like she is leaning out of the darkness.

I picked another 2 photos that I had taken during filming and again dropped the transparency of them. I used these 3 images to create a little montage around the main image of the rose, which I have kept as full transparency so it stands out form the rest if the images.

Choosing A Font

I used dafont.com to find an appropriate font for the magazine advert, as there was not not enough choice in the standard fonts that Photoshop provides.

I knew that because of the nature and content of our video, we needed something quite simple and almost gothic looking. I thought that having a font that looked like handwriting was really appropriate as in part of our video a suicide note os written. This combined with the fact our album is going to be called Cease To Begin made it obvious to me that this was the right way forwards.

After trawling through this website I found that these 4 fonts were the best that I could find.

Harabara Hand

You Won't Bring Me Down

Renaissance

Nothing You Could Do

I am going to use the font called 'You Won't Bring me Down' for the the album's title and perhaps for writing Band Of Horses.

Starting To Create The Magazine Advert

It is my job in the group to design and create the magazine advert for our brand, a job that I am happy with, because I think that is the job that suits me best as I am not very confident with using Final Cut Express which we use to edit the music video.

I will be using this photo, which I took during one of our filming sessions as the main image that will appear on our magazine advert.

First I used the 'photo edges' filter tool to change the image's appearance and then used the magic wand tool to cut out the part of the image that I wanted to use. Finally I desaturated the image and used the history brush tool to only keep the brightness of the rose in colour.

Once I had decided on the font I was going to use I added the name and artist of the album. Next I need to add on album reviews, record company/sponsors logo, and barcode.

Magazine Advert Research

In order to create my own magazine advert I need to look at existing adverts from current magazines.

This advert is advertising The Verve's new album, and instead of using the band themselves as the artwork they have opted for a stunning photograph of a cloudy sky. I think that this imagery alone will draw people's eyes instantly to it, and then the title leaps out at you in a large, block, black font. The fact that the image looks to have been filtered so it is sepia, makes it a lot easier for the designers to have added the text on top of that so it can be seen and read clearly. I would definitely like to use this type of image on my advert, so I can have one stand out image that leaps of the page at you, and then text around it as a secondary thought.

This advert for Basement Jaxx's album is very different from The Verve's, in that it is a lot more colourful, vibrant and 'in your face'. I think that this does work just as effectively as The Verve's advert as Basement Jaxx music is in a different genre to The Verve's music. Fans of Basement Jaxx would expect anything they do to be 'out there' and exciting, whereas The Verve's fans would not.

The whole idea of this advert is futuristic, with the background being a galaxy in space, and the font used is very slanted, block and well... futuristic. The fact that it has a monkey eating a leaf as the main image just shows how quirky the advert is trying to be, and that image in itself will definitely catch people's attention and draw a laugh at least!

I think the main thing that I will take from these two adverts for my own magazine advert is that I definitely need one main image on it that will instantly catch reader's attention when they are flicking through a magazine.