Final Video

FINAL DIGIPAK

FINAL MAGAZINE ADVERT

Evaluation Question One

To view in full scale, view at http://hollyarmitage.edu.glogster.com/evaluation-question-1

Evaluation Question Two

Click to see the enlarged image

Evaluation Question Three

To view evaluation question three, click the image below: 

Evaluation Question Four

Please pause on the shots containing text in order to read them; as for conserving memory, they are only 5 seconds long.

DRAFT Evaluation Question Four

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

The use of technology within this project was crucial in all stages of development. Without the use of internet, software and modern day technology, not only would filming a music video be impossible, but the vast level of research and planning attained would be difficult to acquire.

When researching the conventions of music videos the use of internet and television was necessary, to find and watch existing examples. YouTube was the main source of video inspiration, as it contains a vast amount of videos that you could not find anywhere else. I also made us of the music channels found on Sky and Freeview, as they play videos that are in the charts and enjoyed by people in our target market group. Once these videos had been found I would then copy an embed code and display them on my solo, or joint blog, to demonstrate the elements I liked and wished to remember. Blogger allows a journal or sketchbook style of work to be produced as you can upload anything from videos, text, images and ideas for the music video, keeping them in one place that can be accessed everywhere. Without blogger, it would have been hard to collaborate with George on our project, as using a more complicated form of record, or using paper, wouldn’t have been as efficient, or making the most of the technology available. When looking at existing digipak and adverts, the Google image tool really helped, as a large amount of designs could be found in one place. I also found digipaks that could be accessed in real life, and took photos of these on my iPod to demonstrate various conventions that weren’t shown online. To put these on blogger I simply emailed them to my school account, and added them to a post. Once I had found a large variety of digipaks and magazine adverts, I evaluated their strengths and weaknesses using Prezi, as I find it easy to use and a great way to display large amounts of text, without making it boring or uninteresting to read. I made a Prezi for three evaluations (Album covers, Digipak’s and magazine adverts) as it separated them nicely so I knew where to find certain pieces of information. As part of the theory behind music video, it was useful to gain knowledge on existing theorists and conventions within music videos, and for that we looked at Andrew Goodwin. Information about Goodwin could be found on Slideshare; of which the most helpful PowerPoint was uploaded to our blog. Slideshare made it easy to find a variety of sources and allow us to choose the most suitable and informative, instead of reading a block of text on a different website.

After gaining knowledge of all three products using a variety of technologies, we created a survey using an online survey tool called Survey monkey. This allowed us to create a questionnaire specifically to obtain the relevant information needed, for us to create a successful music video. To promote the survey we used our individual twitter accounts, asking our followers to help us and fill it in. Once we had collected the results they were converted into various s graphs and charts to visually show what the target audience felt about our ideas. We print screened these onto a word document, uploaded it onto scribd and placed onto our blog.

To choose the song we were to create our video for, me and George used iTunes to listen to a variety of music that we both, or individually, liked. Eventually we both chose ‘Afternoon’ by ‘Youth Lagoon’ and decided this was the best song to film our video to. We already had our artist in mind and used social networking sites to contact her and ask her what she thought about being in our video, as well as our song choice. We consulted her about styling and used Polyvore (the same online creator tool we used to make our mood board), to browse various types of outfits and dresses, selecting ones we wanted to use as inspiration when filming. We used the selection of dresses in our pitch to show our peers the types of ideas we wanted to use within our video, and this pitch was created on animoto. We were given the task of using only 25 words within our pitch, so the use of images was necessary to convey the tone and genre we wanted to create. We included footage and photos in our pitch that we had taken ourselves, to portray the elements we wished to include. These photos (and more) were later uploaded to Flickr and displayed in a post about the variety of locations we were going to use. Flickr allowed us to keep all of our photos in one place, as well as present them in and interesting way on our blog, in the layout of thumbnails. After creating a fictitious twitter account for Rosa-Leigh, we started creating our storyboard using post-it notes and then used George’s iPhone 5s to take photos of the frames, uploading them to Final Cut Pro X, allowing us to create our animatic. The animatic was really useful as it allowed us to see the length and placements of all the shots, seeing what they would look like in time with the song. Once we had finished it we uploaded it to YouTube and put it on our blogs for Mr Ford to see.

After creating a hand-drawn design for my digipak, I scanned it in to the computer and saved it as an image to put on my blog. Using a scanned image instead of a photograph taken on your phone means the resolution and quality of the file is better, making your work look more presentable and professional. I used the scanner once again when creating my digipak, as to create the green background, I scanned one of my t-shirts and cropped the image to use on the inside panels. Again, by scanning my t-shirt it ensured the quality was much better than a photograph, and it ensured the colour was not lost in the process either. When creating both my magazine advert and digipak, I used Photoshop to create and edit the images and my designs. Adobe Photoshop allowed me to insert any image, crop, rotate, change the colours, erase unwanted elements and create an entire brand for my artist, as it provides tools such as ‘the magic wand’ and the crop tools, making it the most appropriate form of software for a project like this. I took the photos included on my advert and digipak with my iPod Touch, as used an app called VSCOcam to edit them. I find that app easiest to use as they provide specific filters that enhance photos to make them look more professional. To use the photo I took I simply emailed it to myself, and started to plan the rest of my digipak. Due to the fact there are only a certain amount of fonts on Photoshop, I found my chosen font on Dafont.com, as there is a much wider choice. ‘Never let go’ was then imported onto my computer and installed into Photoshop, ready to use on my products.

To check that we could film on certain days, we consulted various weather apps and websites, to ensure that there would be no clouds or rain to spoil the lighting of the shots. Without the use of these apps and websites, we would have had to cancel last minute on the filming days, due to not knowing what the forecast would be. When filming with Rosa-Leigh, the majority of the time we used a Nikon D3100 camera, containing an SD memory card which allowed us to obtain high quality footage for every shot. To create the mirror and kaleidoscope effects we used George’s iPhone 5s and an app called Video Star. This app allowed us to film Rosa-Leigh with these effects on the screen, so we could see how the footage would turn out, as we were filming. George’s phone also allowed us to play the song out loud for Rosa-Leigh to sing along to, as it was important to ensure the lip sync was in time. Whilst we used a tripod to film the static and panning shots, I used my Samsung ES71 to film the vintage style nature shots, such as those filming out of the car window. At the end of our filming days we would upload the footage to an iMac and once we had finished filming completely, we used Final Cut Pro X to edit the footage.

Once we had finished editing the footage we uploaded the finished video to YouTube and created a questionnaire for our target audience, peers and friends using Microsoft word. We put the document on scribd in order to upload it to our blogs and this then allowed us to evaluate our progress and see what we had to change. Feedback from Mr Ford for our first draft was also emailed to us, and not only did this show us what we needed to change, but it also made us think about the video as a whole and what else we could do to improve it. Evaluating the video at each stage was useful, especially with technology such as Blogger and Final Cut Pro X, as we could watch and re-watch our video to ensure we changed the right aspects and got the lip sync in time. Blogger then let us write about what we were doing, why we were changing certain elements, and the evaluation of our progress.

To evaluate the project as a whole these questions were given to us via Mr Fords blog, including examples of past students work. These links were helpful guidelines as to what we were supposed to do and what elements we should try to include. To create draft answers I used Microsoft word, as Blogger doesn't account for spelling or grammatical errors; meaning written work isn’t accurate. By creating a draft answer using Microsoft Word it also means I can change the format of words, easily change the structure of my writing, and check the word count. To create visually exciting answers to the four evaluate questions I plan to use platforms such as Glogster.............

DRAFT Evaluation Question Three

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout the project I have sought advice and opinions from peers and friends, to identify what I needed to improve or include within my work. Initially, we created a survey using an online survey tool to gather information on our target audience, as well as people who were older, or preferred a different genre. We asked them several questions relating to their age, music preference, what they enjoy within a music video, if they liked our mood board and which features they would want to see in our video. The information gained from this survey was incredibly valuable, as it allowed us to understand what was liked and disliked within a music video, from people in and around our age group. The majoring of people surveyed were 15-18 years old and the most popular genre of music was alternative. This helped us narrow down our target audience, to people of our age who listen to Alternative music. We then went onto research various ‘Tribes’ using UK tribes to define various groups who would watch our music video and enjoy the song. When asked what they liked in music videos, we gained ideas from their responses, such as ‘casual scenery shots’, ‘fun’ and ‘the artist singing in it’. The feedback we got concerning our mood board was positive, meaning we were on the right track to creating an enjoyable music video. Two responses showed that it was not to the audience members liking, because they weren’t interested in this style of music. We realised that we could not make our video appeal to everyone, so we chose to focus on the comments from our chosen target market, in order to get realistic responses and helpful feedback that could improve our video. We gave them several ideas we had in mind for our music video and asked them to rate them on a ‘love or hate’ ranged scale. They all received good feedback and it showed us we had the right ideas for our video, as what we suggested appealed to our target audience. Overall, the majority of people either loved or liked our ideas, indicating that our video was suitable and plausible.

Once we had created our music video we asked several of our friends and peers to give feedback on how well we had done, and what we needed to improve. We designed a simple questionnaire that focused on what they liked, didn’t like, what they thought about Rosa-Leigh, and what we could improve in the video. Again, we asked people who were in our age group as they were the focused market for the video; however we sought feedback from people who were slightly older also, to see if the video could reach a more mature level in the industry. We got a variety of feedback, as it was down to personal taste. Some people didn’t like the effects we had used, whereas other people loved them, and various other contrasts like that arose within the answers we were given. We understood that not everyone really enjoyed our video and didn’t like various elements, however we chose to improve only the things we needed to, based on the feedback Mr. Ford gave us. We felt that comments such as ‘include less outfit changes’ had been accounted for in our research and planning and kept with the theme of our video, therefore we chose to keep this element in our video, as we felt, even though a minority didn’t like them, the general consensus was that they worked well within the genre of our video.

The feedback from Mr Ford included improvements for our video that he felt was necessary to improve our grade for the finished product. Comments such as ‘the fence doesn’t work as a background’ were suggested, and made us think about the quality of our video, causing us to re-film various shots, as the backgrounds weren’t professional enough. Upon editing the re-filmed footage we found that it improved the quality of our video by changing the scenery in which we shot the video, and we both found we liked it better too. Mr Ford also supplied feedback for our digipak and magazine advert, helping us to improve our marks and the overall style of the texts. Verbally, he told me to change the volume button on both products, to which I responded with second drafts of my work, excluding the elements previously mentioned. When marking my second draft, he gave me further improvements that ensured I gained full marks for both products. After taking his advice and amending my digipak and advert, I was much happier with the overall design of both texts, as I feel they are professional and suitable for the genre and representation of my artist.

 

Two of my peers also gave feedback on the overall link between my advert and digipak, and the responses were positive and complimentary.

DRAFT Evaluation Question Two

How effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

When creating the video, digipak and magazine advert, I tried to make a clear link between them all, however the link is strongest between the digipak and magazine advert, as visually follow the same theme. The video, influenced by nature, means there is a link between the sunflower images and the flowers included in the video, however when looking at existing examples of these products, I found that artists such as Alt J and Julianne Barwick have released album artwork and posters, that only loosely resembles videos for songs that are featured on the album. I have followed this convention as I believe a particular location used in one video, shouldn’t dictate the whole image of the album or advert. The only link to the video I have used on both the digipak and magazine advert is the mention and listing of ‘Afternoon’ – the song title.

I have followed the same pattern on both the digipak and advert to create a unique brand for Rosa-Leigh. Although it may be similar to existing brands, the sunflowers, as a motif, is used as a background on the poster, triggering a link between the advert and the album cover, as that too uses the sunflower image. I have also used the swirl from the inside panel of the digipak, on the advert, to create another, more subtle, attempt at linking the two products. I have also chosen to use the same font displayed on the front and back panels of the digipak, on the magazine advert. ‘Never let go’ struck me as a very decorative and appealing font, giving the digipak a homemade feel because of its handwritten nature. The reason I wanted to choose, and later on, chose, a handwritten style text, was because I had ideas of making a homemade style video, such as those of Lana Del Rey’s, and I feel the handwritten text links to those elements of the video. The elements to which I am referring are, sections of footage where Rosa-Leigh talks, laughs and isn’t putting on a show for the cameras; she is just being herself. I think not only does this footage make her seem down to earth, but the homemade, handwritten link to the digipak creates a brand for the artist, of a sweet, nice and down to earth girl. The text in all three products is white, therefore banishing any dark connotations that black has, in exchange for a pure, clean colour that is associated with ‘good’. This then adds to the final image of a light-hearted video, digipak and advert as the text is easy to read, appealing and contains only good connotations, showing Rosa-Leigh in a good light.

The advert and digipak both contain the record label logo, to distinguish Rosa-Leigh’s brand and career. I chose Island Records as it is a well-known label who sign some of the most popular and successful bands in the industry. By using the logo on both products it makes it clear to the audience that Rosa-Leigh is an esteemed, up and coming, successful artist, as this record label is trusted for signing high quality artists. ‘Rosa-Leigh – A Beautiful Life’ has been made extremely visible on both ancillary products so there is no confusion as to who these products belong to and what they are promoting. Inspired by Lorde, Kate Rusby and PJ Harvey, I chose to create the advert and digipak without using an image of Rosa-Leigh. Not using an image of the artist and letting their name sell the album, instead of their looks, gives an impression of high status within the music industry, as it should be about the music, not their appearance. I believe the link between my digipak and magazine advert is strong, and reflects the natural scenery within the chosen footage, as well as the down to earth personality of Rosa-Leigh that we tried to convey within the video.

DRAFT Evaluation Question One

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

When looking at research and existing media products to plan my video, digipak and magazine advert, I paid close attention to the conventions and elements contained within each example. I then investigated the most interesting and applicable conventions to identify which were best to use in the creation of my products.

The research and planning for my digipak meant looking at existing products by a variety of artists to see what they both had in common, and what made them different and more appealing than others. To gain initial research I used a book from the Art department that covered designs within CD covers, and by extension, digipaks. There was a variety of different styles within the book, and I quickly decided I wanted to create a digipak with 4 panels, instead of 6 or 8; Erik Wennergren’s ‘Tales from the Earth’ was my main influence for this choice. His digipak contained images of nature and the artist – and although I didn’t use Rosa-Leigh on the cover of my digipak – I took the idea of holding a flower within cupped hands and developed that convention to suit the colour scheme and style of my digipak. His digipak was much neater than the ones with multiple panels and the links between each of the panels were clear and easy to see. After looking at other digipak examples such as Rihanna’s ‘Loud’ album and David Ramirez’ ‘American Soul’ I decided that I definitely wanted to include nature within my digipak, as it would also tie in with the theme of our video. I looked at around 100 album covers to achieve a broad range of conventions and ideas, many of which contained images of nature such as the ocean or trees, so I knew that creating a digipak using the theme of nature was plausible and looked good.

I began to look at albums by Peace and Splash and really liked the idea of a visible ‘sticker’ on the album cover to convey the title and artist name. I used the convention of a circular sticker, as speech bubbles or stars would have looked too childish and not professional enough for this style of digipak. I used the ‘sticker’ as a focal point for the album artwork, as all digipaks need something to entice the audience and give it a centre of focus. Because I chose to include nature on the font cover (and throughout the rest of my digipak) I decided not to include Rosa-Leigh on any of the panels. Many other artists do this such as Arctic Monkeys ‘AM’ and I decided to follow this convention in order to give the impression Rosa-Leigh was an esteemed artist and that buying the album for her name, not just for her looks was a credit to her work. I decided to use the same image on both the front and back of the digipak, taking ideas from Julianna Barwick’s, ‘The Magic Place, as the use of nature and similar images has also been used. When adding information to the digipak I adhered to generic conventions within what was written. I included the track listing, barcode and copyright information on the back panel, an image of hands holding a flower on the inside right panel and then production information on the inside left. I invented this information by studying albums by McFly and Lady GaGa as they are well-known artists. From these albums I made sure Producers, Writers, Vocalists and Musicians were all accounted for, just as they would be on a real digipak.

When creating my magazine advert I ensured there was a clear link between the theme, style and images used on both of the products. I looked at existing magazine adverts from bands and artists such as Mika and The Wombats and found there was a clear link between their album cover and digipak, through use of the same text, image and branding of their artist. Coldplay’s ‘Mylo Xyloto’ and Florence and the Machine’s ‘Lungs’ were my main sources of inspiration, and to generate ideas for my magazine advert I used conventions from theirs. Both adverts had used the same image that was featured on their album cover, so I decided to use the sunflower picture on my advert also. I followed the theme of Florence and the Machines, placing the title of my artist at the top of the page where it is most visible and having the rest of the text in the lower thirds of the magazine advert. I included a release date (‘Out Now’), the various platforms it could be bought on, the record label logo, a website address and featured songs, following the conventions of many digipaks who adhere in the same way. I also chose to adhere to the rule of thirds, something that was introduced to me in AS media studies, when creating our magazine front covers. I chose to place ‘Rosa-Leigh’ and ‘A beautiful life within the top third’, the spiral and 'new album’ in the middle third and the remainder of information within the last third. There is a clear link between the digipak and magazine advert to ensure that the brand is recognisable and professional, as well as representing the idea of nature explored within the video.

To gain ideas for the creation of our music video, we spent time looking at existing videos by bands we both liked such as Givers and Lana Del Rey. We both really liked ‘Noche Nada’ by Givers and wanted to create a video that followed roughly the same structure and ideas, however, once we had developed our ideas and conventions from other products, it became more of our own video, rather than a copy. When choosing what to put in our video we found a variety of conventions such as the use of nature, the use of intro text, experimenting with the focus within shots, and having the artist lip syncing. We ensured that the artist sang along in the video to adhere to Andrew Goodwin’s theory of performance and making the video look credible. We have created a star image in which the artist communicates the lyrics to the audience, by singing along and looking into the camera; breaking the fourth wall and creating a connection that entices the viewers, making her a storyteller. The voice of the singer is unique, creating a trademark for our artist, so she is recognisable and sets her apart from other artists. One of the conventions we could not find much evidence for was the use of bubbles. We only managed to find David Guetta’s ‘Where them girls at’, and even then the bubbles were CGI. Although we could not find any videos containing bubbles, I understand it does not mean there aren’t any. Therefore, by using bubbles we are developing the conventions used in David Guetta’s video and filming with real bubbles, instead of CGI. Another convention we have developed is using various locations and outfits within our video, instead of keeping the continuity used in most existing products. We took the idea from Lucy Rose’s ‘Middle of the bed’ and developed it to suit the genre and style of our video, choosing exterior locations and summery outfits to keep the light-hearted theme within our product. The styling was influenced by artists and bands such as HAIM, Daughter and Lana Del Rey and was something we ensured was appropriate when filming our music video.