Media Evaluation
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| Figure One |
For my media A2 coursework, I decided to choose the first brief given to us which was to create a music video, we were also asked to create the two ancillary products from the following three options: A magazine advert, a digipak cover or a website. We were asked to post all of our work onto a blog so it can easily be seen my blog is here. I have chosen to do a website and the digipak, however I planning to create a whole digipak not just a cover. I chose my ancillary products because when conducting my audience research I found that most people in my sample preferred buying CD’s to downloading music - 46% therefore I felt that to appeal to my target audience creating a digipak was the best option. Also in the sample 36% of people didn’t prefer buying one over the other that’s why I also decided to create a website as well to target those people who are technologically minded by on my website providing a link to purchase a download (this information is presented in my blog post – Analysis of poll results 19/10/11 and also shown in 'Figure One') I also thought that in todays modern society were things such as the internet have become such an essential part of daily life creating a website would be a great way to attract my target audience, and now with many people interacting with social media I believe that this was a must have element for my website. This is why I didn’t see the magazine advert appealing to my target audience as much as the other ancillary products would. Using the poll I mentioned earlier I was easily able to identify my target audience this helped as a starting point for my video and ancillary products. The results of my poll showed that I would target both males and females with an age range from 16-24 (mostly students) who spend an average amount on music each month and those who still have old school values by mainly buying CD’s. This is why I have mentioned student discount on products and tour tickets on the blog section on the website I have created.
As part of my research for my media products, I decided to analyse three music videos (as shown in posts: First music video analysis 22/10/11, Second music video analysis 2/11/11 and Third music video analysis 03/11/11) by doing this I was able to look in to and discover the consistent themes that appear through most music videos across a range of genres, It also gave me an insight into the codes used by artists to target their audience and portray their genre through the video. Doing all of this helped me to apply all the things I had learnt into the creation of my own music video. What I noticed in my research is that in all the music videos I analysed is that none of the shots were repeated, so I have tried to avoid this at all costs in my video as it becomes boring and repetitive for the audience.
The performer in my music video is actually the writer of the song; therefore I believe that in my music video she looks confident as no one can perform the song as she can. This point was raised by a participant of my audience feedback questionnaire who said in additional comments ‘The singer looks comfortable’ I believe this adds to the reality of my music video.
The song featured on my music video does not fit into a particular genre as the song was written by my performer however after the songs topic is usually covered in the indie and sometimes pop genres that’s why with my music video analysis I looked at artists from truly indie but also an artist who fits into both. As the song is performed acoustically I also picked an artist/video to analyse that has a great deal of experience with this and is closely recognised with acoustic music. Within my audience feedback I asked the question ‘what genre did you believe my music video to be?’ this was so I could see what genre of my video fits any of the suggested genres put forward by me and the performer. On one questionnaire the participant said that they believed the genre to be an ‘acoustic ballad’ I feel like this is an appropriate description of the song and the video I have created I feel like the ballad part is represented in my music video by the transitions I have used such as dissolves and few jump cuts and slow scene changes so it flows with the style and tempo of the song. The following question in my audience feedback was ‘did you feel the performer represents the genre well, if yes why?’ One reply said ‘yes, as she’s singing and playing an original song’ once again by making the decision to use and original song and the writer as a performer adds to my music video.
When creating my ancillary products, I went about researching the same way as I did my music video I analysed three digipak’s and three website all from a range of artists different to the ones I had researched for the music video, this was so I was able to gather an understanding from a diverse range of both artists and genres and apply them to my products, I felt by doing this I got a greater understanding of the codes and conventions used when creating websites and a digipak. For my website I discovered that even artists from different genres still all followed in suit when it came to creating websites, such as the tabs used the layout and style with blogs, gallery’s and videos been the main focus on the homepage. This is what I took into account when creating my website that’s why I created a blog and I also added a box on my homepage for tour dates as my artist excels in performance this is what her target audience would want, as they themselves will probably be able to play instruments and are dedicated to music as my artist is shown to be. When creating my digipak I noticed that many of them used lots of colours and showed lots of expression however I wanted to create a fully black and white digipak to show the simplicity of the song and my performers voice, after my doubts I did some research to see if any other digipak’s had been created in fully black and white I also wanted to see how they had been set out and if they were detailed or simplistic (Research shown in blog post ‘My Black and White Digipak’ 03/03/12). I noticed that many of them were very simplistic and if they had a scene it was very simple, and when it was just the artist the shot was always close up therefore when creating the cover for my digipak I made the background plain brick wall (that also featured in the music video keeping the continuity) I also had a close up photo of my artist, when looking back at my research I feel that my cover closely represents the John Hammond album cover I found. Throughout the development stages of my digipak, I decided that using colour would make my digipak more appealing however I still wanted the picture to be in black and white so I took the idea from the third digipak I analysed ‘The Kooks – Inside In Inside Out’ where they had a black and white picture of the band but had used an eye catching red for the title of the album and a bold black for the artists name, after looking at this I used a yellow for the artists name that later changed to the brown/yellow of the guitar that featured in my digipak and the name of the album featured in a bold white the same as how it featured on the spine of the digipak. However after reviewing my digipak I decided that the words on the spine should also be in the brown/yellow to fit in with the rest of the text on my digipak.
In my music video (time - 2.51 – 2.58) I have tried to make it ironic as when I had taken out the camera to film outdoor scenes for my video it began to snow this made it dangerous for us to travel where we planning however so I didn’t miss the opportunity I decided to film a short sequence in the street, I then thought if I got my performer to sing the line ‘the sun is shining’ with her hat and coat on this would make the audience laugh and give my music video a different edge. When the weather had cleared up and I was once again planning to film my outdoor scenes my performer had hurt herself and was unable to get to where we had planned to film. My music video makes use of the postmodern feature pastiche, as the scene where my performer is in front of the fairy lights and singing also occurs in the Florence + the machine – Cosmic love music video. I believe by using this technique it reflected the peace and tranquillity of the song. I also think that the fans of my artist will have to become an active audience while watching the music video making them relate to it more and make it more memorable for them. The genre for Florence + the machine has also has been described as indie pop so there is a high possibility that the people who watch my music video have also seen that one. Therefore on the whole I believe my final products to be conventional of real life media products that we would see in our local store or on the internet.
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| Figure Two |
Due to the continuity throughout my music video and ancillary products, I believe that when they are used together they will create an effective advertisement campaign that directly relates to my target audience. My ancillary products are closely related due to fonts, style and colour scheme. They are effective as my website features my album cover on signalling it’s release this is what I had seen many artists do after conducting my research. I have used the same fonts on both of my ancillary products, I used the font ‘Vladimir Script’ as it looked like old style handwriting I feel by using this it gave a very personal element to the products this relates to the song chosen for my video as it is a very personal song dealing with serious issues. I also created a logo for my artist (Shown on blog post ‘My Artists Logo’ 09/02/12 and also in 'Figure Two') I see this as a major selling point as most successful band, artists or brands have their own specific logo, this is why I made sure my logo was placed on the front cover of my album and also on the header of my website this is so when the audience went onto the website it was the first thing they saw. By using a logo it helps the audience to visually connect my ancillary products together and any other products that may have developed, it also helps the audience to remember my performer’s name, even though the logo is of a very common animal I have tried to make it very distinctive by making its stripes uneven lengths and widths. For my album cover the background is one of the locations I have used within my music video this is so once again my audience can make a connection between all the products I have created aiming to achieve an effective combination of products.Therefore I believe that my music video and ancillary products have strong synergy and when used together they become very effective.
As I have previously mentioned for my audience feedback I have created a questionnaire, an online poll and created video responses of participants, this is so I am able to reach a wide range of diverse people I have also asked a range of questions both demographic and psychographic questions so I am able to understand basic things about my audience such as age and gender but also find out more in depth information about their habits things such as how much money they spend on music and also how they prefer buying their music. I believe by doing this and asking such questions has helped me a lot through this work as it helped me determine what ancillary products to choose and also to help me to decide the design of them and what they should include.
Due to the particular questions I asked I felt like I learnt a lot from my audience feedback, As some of my questions focused on what improvements I could make to both my music video and ancillary products that’s why throughout my blog I have shown all the changes I have made and how everything came together into the final products. The main feeling I got after my audience feedback was the need for more locations in my music video as I only have 5 and only 3 of them only appear in short scenes. After this feedback I was already planning to shoot more scenes in a couple more locations that I had already decided and focused on earlier in my planning on my storyboard and in my animatic (As shown on my blog ‘My Animatic – 29/11/11) that I had created in the planning process. However when it came around to filming extra scenes for my video I was restricted by the weather then when it came to rescheduling my performer was unable to attend due to injury.
I was also concerned about the lip syncing in my video as when I was editing my music video together I spent most of my time matching my performers movements and singing to the track I had previously recorded and as I was trying to avoid the use of the same clips it was very difficult as sometimes my performer was singing the line wrong or it didn’t look very realistic. Even when I had pieced areas of my video together I was still concerned, to see if it appeared as in time to the audience as I thought it was I made this one of my questions on my audience feedback, I did not tell the audience I had gotten my performer to lip sync however when I got my questionnaires I found a very positive feedback as some of my responses said things such as ‘I actually believed she was really singing it!’ and ‘It was really good, I couldn’t even tell it was synced’ as my video heavily relies on the timing of the lip syncing and miming after my feedback it was like a weight off my shoulders.
As my music video is performance based I was worried that it would become boring, so I made sure I did not repeat any shots or scenes and used transitions that I felt fitted in with the song and the style of my video. I also wanted to show that I was confident with the camera and that I knew a range of shots and angles that I can use to keep the audience interested. I believe that this was picked up throughout my audience feedback as in one questionnaire that I received back it stated that my transitions with the song I had chosen ‘creates verisimilitude’ they also said that the transitioned looked natural so I feel pleased with this as I didn’t want the audience to be aware of how much the scenes cut from one another. In my video response someone touched upon the angles that I had chosen saying that when using a low angle shot it made my performer appear dominant over the audience it was also mentioned about the close up on the artists face show her true emotions that reflect the serious and touching issues being discussed in the song. I learnt from the comment that I have managed to portray the message which I was achieving through the camera shots and angles used.
When filming my music video I used a Sony HDRCX115EB High Definition Handycam unlike most of the other cameras at my college this used a memory card instead of a tape, I feel this gave me a huge benefit as when it came to putting the recordings onto a computer I could do it straight away and it didn’t have to be on an editing suite I was able to put them onto an ordinary computer label them, delete the ones I didn’t want then move them onto the editing suite saving time for other people who also needed to use them. As I have already had experience with a memory card unlike tape I was able to keep my work organized and was very confident with using it. To create our music video we were asked to use the Adobe Premier Pro software, at first the software seemed difficult and confusing however after a couple of tutorials I felt like it was very effective and the more I used it the more comfortable I felt with it. I believe the programme was very good and I was able to achieve everything I wanted to, however on some aspects I wish I had chosen a faster song so I would have been able to get more out the effects and transitions that the programme was able to do.
When taking pictures for my blog and for my ancillary products I always used an Olympus SP-620UZ this was because the camera itself had many features and effects however it was simple to use has a really good zoom that doesn’t go blurry or pixelated. For editing my photos and actually creating my ancillary products I used Adobe Photoshop CS4 even when creating my magazine last year I found this programme difficult and challenging so I was dreading the thought of using it this year, however when creating my ancillary products I took my time and did everything in steps which I have posted about extensively on my blog, I made sure all my layers were labelled correctly I believe this helped me as if I made a mistake it was easily found and corrected. I know feel much more confident about using Photoshop and when comparing my work from last year to now I can see how much I have improved and I feel very proud.
When creating my story board I scanned them in using an Epson scanner I then decided I wanted to create an animatic so I saved the images of my storyboards as jpeg’s then opened them up on Photoshop and cropped out the pictures individually and saved those as jpeg’s. I created my animatic on Adobe Premier pro, this was before I had started my music video so I felt that by doing this it gave me some experience on the programme and made me feel more confident when it came to creating my actual music video.
When it came to storing and presenting my advanced portfolio, we once again decided to use blogger a website provided by Google. I believe this was a major advantage when doing my coursework as all of your work is stored in one placed and as blogger sorts the posts out in chronological order both my teacher and I were able to see where I was up to and what I still had left to complete. It also made finding particular pieces of work easy compared to if you had it all on paper in a folder. When I created my music video the video file was too large to place straight onto blogger this is why I decided to use YouTube that is also owned by Google, this helped as I did not need to make a different account I could still log in with my blogger details. I then created my own YouTube channel and every video I created I uploaded and stored there, this was so my blogger did not overload it was very simple to get my videos onto blogger I only had to changed my blogger into HTML mode and then copy the embed code from YouTube and paste it to onto my blog post and when published the video appeared.
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| The characters I created on Go Animate that I have placed on my blog |
I have also explored other areas of media technologies using websites such as Prezi and Go Animate I feel these helped me most especially in my planning stages using Go Animate was a great way to explain tings that I was unable to write down formally and that I may only have been able to describe in a conversation, I created particular characters within my Go Animate scenes to keep a consistent theme and so that the viewer understood who was asking the question this was because sometimes the speech was unclear. Once again Go Animate has links with Google so I was able to use my same login details, however with a misunderstanding within my Google account that I was unable to sort near the end of my project I was unable to create anymore animation to help me in the later stages such as evaluation. Out of everything that I have used throughout my project the one thing that I feel like I am very likely to use again is Prezi, once again I used this major during my planning stages.
When creating notes on paper I have always been very visual and like things organized so I always use text bubbles and arrows. So when I was using Prezi I felt that I was able to create exact replicas of notes that I had created in class I also felt that the fact that it could be moved around as a presentation was great as people where able to see what I had written and when instead of people seeing the picture as a whole. The fact that Prezi is like a notepad that forever keeps expanding was an advantage to me as when I thought of a new idea I could just go back to wherever I wanted it to fit in and know I would have room to fit it in. As I had done a lot of in depth analysis on my music video and within the analysis I had talked a lot about visual things I was great to be able to write what I wanted then also show the pictures as well within my Prezi presentation that’s why I had created one for everyone of my video analysis. Once again Prezi allows you to import data from you Google account so I was able to present information in the form of videos from YouTube and information from my blog. Even though Prezi did not let you log in with your Google account it only took a few minutes to register. I feel like I had would of used these two services more if I did not have trouble with my Google account later on in my project.
However when creating long pieces of work such as my analysis of existing media products and my evaluation I always find it best to use Microsoft Word 2010 as it is easy to use, has an instant spell checker and it is very easy to create hyperlinks on the other hand I do find it very difficult to insert graphs and pictures when using it, I tend to add them later when I have published them on my blog.
At the beginning of this year when we were asked to create our advanced portfolio I was worried by the workload as I did not feel like I would be able to complete it all I felt the tasks we were asked to do were above me and I had no choice in succeeding however now I am glad at what I have achieved even though I know of improvements that I could of made that would of made all my products better.
