Weekly Updates Week Fourteen

Week Fourteen

12/12/11: This was our final week of doing A2 media, in which we completed our music video, did all four of our evaluation questions and made sure our blog was finished and we had completed all of the tasks.

'Little Lady' Final Draft

Apologies for the three minutes of blank air at the end of the video, there were problems in the editing stage but we hope you enjoy the final draft of our video. I would like to thank everybody who put in the time to help make our video what it is, we could not have done it without you all.

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

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

Media technologies were hugely important in all stages of creating our piece. Below are all the ways in which I used various technologies.

RESEARCH AND PLANNING

• Madonna.com – This helped me gain better insight into my star study of Madonna

• Google – Google helped me many times throughout the construction and research stage, it helped me find various websites which helped me with the research. 

• Google images – I needed to find a lot of images throughout the research and planning of the piece, thus Google Images was a big help.

• Wikipedia – Although not the most respected/trusted websites, it did help me in finding out information. However, I know not everything on Wikipedia is to be trusted and so I double checked the information was correct before using it.

• Youtube – Youtube was used for a variety of different reasons throughout the construction and research, sometimes for finding videos for the star analysis, or finding videos to analyse for Goodwin’s theory, or even for uploading our audience research. Youtube was used many times in the research and planning of the piece.

• IMDB – IMDB was very useful for finding out dates of births or birthplaces of particular artists, or even finding out their real names and awards they had been nominated for.

• Paint – When printscreening clips from Youtube, I needed to then crop the screengrab in Paint and turn it into an actual picture which would be uploadable to Blogger.

• Finalcut Pro – We used this in our construction and research when doing our audience research, we needed to edit all of the clips together and turn it into a video, with a soundtrack and so on.

• Kerrang Magazine – We had to analyse two magazine adverts, so I bought a ‘Kerrang’ magazine so that I could take two magazine adverts from it.

• Lyrics.com – I was constantly looking up lyrics throughout the duration of the construction and research, be it for our actual music video ‘Little Lady’ or for the video analysis’ where I included the lyrics to the music videos in the posts.

• Edsheeran.com – We had to get permission from the artist/the artist’s representative and so we went onto Ed Sheeran’s official website, found the email that we had to contact to find out, and emailed them straight away – they were back to us within mere minutes giving us permission to use his song.

• Gmail – We used Gmail to obviously email Ed Sheeran’s representative, but also to stay in contact with each other in a more formal way.

• Camera – This was used when filming the audience research.

• Blogger – The most obvious one of all, Blogger – every piece of work we do needs to be put on our own individual blogs in order to show that we are doing the tasks set.

• Phones – In order to stay in contact with each other and find out instantly where the other members of our group were, it was hugely important we had each other’s numbers so we could contact each other every time we needed to. 

• Drawings – I drew the storyboard for our music video on paper to give us all a better vision of the piece, but I also drew my first drafts of my digipak and magazine advert to give an idea of what I was hoping to do with my final pieces. 

• Digital Camera – We needed a digital camera to take the pictures for our animatic, which gave the audience an idea of the shots that would be used for our final music video.

• Starnow.co.uk – We used this website to look for possible actors who could star in our music video.

• TRIPOD – This was obviously very important when filming our audience research, we needed to have a steady shot or the research would have looked poor and unplanned.

• Mac – We obviously used the Mac computers to do most of our work, but mostly for the editing process of the audience research. 

CONSTRUCTION:

• CAMERA – We used the camera to film all the scenes of our music video.

• TRIPOD – Sometimes a tripod was not necessary, but generally we wanted to keep the camera steady which is near impossible if you do not have a tripod, thus why it was important.

• MAC – We used the Mac to log and capture all of our footage and then to edit it.
• FINALCUT PRO – This was the editing software we used to edit our music video together.
• YOUTUBE –  We used Youtube to upload our final music video so that people can see it easily as it is so accessible.
• ADOBE PHOTOSHOP – I used Photoshop in the construction of my Final digipak and magazine advert.

EVALUATION:

• Finalcut pro – We used Finalcut Pro to edit our audience feedback.
• Youtube – We used Youtube to upload our audience feedback to so that we could
• Paint – I used paint when taking screenshots from Youtube of our music video, I had to transfer the shots to paint in order to turn them into actual pictures.
• Powerpoint – To vary the presentation of my evaluation questions, I decided to do question one as a powerpoint presentation.
• Camera – We used a camera to film our audience feedback, we went around and asked people to watch our music video then asked them what they liked and what they did not like, and we filmed their answers.
• Tripod – We needed a tripod in order to keep the shots steady.
• Mac – The Mac was used various times in the evaluation, but mostly for logging and capturing our audience feedback and then editing it.
• Scribd – Scribd helped me upload my evaluation question one which I had done in the form of a powerpoint presentation.

Evaluation Question Three: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question Three: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Being the director of the music video, it was my task to be the visionary of the music video. If the audience did not like it, I would feel like I were at fault. All throughout the making of the music video, the audiences opinion was obviously extremely important. We conducted two pieces of audience research throughout the course, one before we started our music video and one after we had completed it.

The audience research we composed before filming our music video helped us gain a better insight into what exactly our target audience, the 16-25 year old category, wanted. This helped us when making our technical decisions for our music video.

The audience feedback was extremely helpful and after speaking about it as a group, we realised where we went wrong and how we could improve in the future. Some people said the music video was very long and drawn out, which we understood but we could do nothing about this as it was only as long as the song.

We got a lot of mixed feedback about the rapper insertions, some people said they liked a purely narrative based music video and felt the rapper dragged them out of the narrative, whilst others said that the performance element helped make the narrative more believable as a music video, and felt that without it the video would come across as more of a short film.

We received negative feedback about certain parts of the music video, for example some people said it seemed a bit repetitive at times towards the end where our main character is walking through a tunnel and it is intercutting between her being stalked and her walking through this tunnel. Some people said they got quite bored at this point, so we knew where we could improve upon it. Another criticism was of the effects, some people found the effects and transitions we used quite over the top, which we appreciated and did our best to cut down on.

We had a lot of positive feedback for our music video, majority of people felt that it looked like something they would see on a popular music channel. They found the performances believable, the varying locations and shot types were both interesting and helped them keep attention.

Our general reception was quite positive, people enjoyed the music video as a whole and we appreciated any criticisms they had, as it all comes in handy for future projects. All in all though, we had rather positive feedback and are happy with our final product, I feel like I fulfilled my task as director and, with a large amount of help from my group of course, created a realistic music video.

Below is the video of the audience feedback we received:

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

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

Below are my two ancillary texts, my final digipak and magazine advert for my music video 'Little Lady' by Ed Sheeran featuring Mikill Pane. The song does not fit under just one genre, so is a hybrid of hip hop/grime/folk rock music. Ed Sheeran is quite an 'indie' artist, his songs featuring very few instruments and simple narrative storylines that anyone can relate to, and I wanted my digipak and magazine advert to reflect his simplicity, yet also have the same effectiveness.

My digipak is very simple, following a main colour pattern of black, browns and oranges. The bottom three panels show one photograph, of a bench with a guitar resting on it, split into three sections. I played with the colour of the photograph to give it a faded, brown/orange hue to it. The reason for the park bench photograph is fairly obvious, we decided to call our fictitious album 'Park Bench', as we wanted something very simple which also sounded like it could be the name of an Indie album. I felt the digipak would look more effective if I included some writing, e.g one panel includes the URL of the artists official website, and another panel mentions that this is the artist's debut album and how the music video we have produced has been nominated for a ficticious award, 'Hip Hop Video Of The Year', this is to intrigue possible buyers of the album and make them want to buy it. The font is brown and goes well with the background colour I have made the photo, it is effective in its simplicity. 

The tracklist featured on the digipak is very simple, with a black background and clear, orange coloured font outlining the tracks featuring on the album. I decided to include orange paw prints around the tracklist as Ed Sheeran's guitar is well known for having an orange pawprint on it, here I am giving homage to the artist. The CD panel is very plain, I wanted it to be plain so as not to take away from the other features of the digipak. The last panel is a photo of the girl who features in our music video for 'Little Lady', the photo is black and white - as is the music video - but this stands out from the rest of the digipak which is in colour. 

My magazine advert also features a photo of a bench which has been stylistically edited and colour corrected to look faded with a brown hue. The font stands out drastically in contrast to the background but the colours still mesh well, the album name is largest and in a black font, with the artist's name in orange and overlapping it, but not enough so as to obscure the clarity of the text. The advert mentions our main product which features on the CD, aswell as the fact that is has been nominated for best hip hop video of the year, all of these things are items which would feature in a real magazine advert, and would intrigue the audience into buying the album. I have also included some black paw prints, which as I said before have come to be known as a trademark of Ed Sheeran. I've included a rating of the album from a magazine called 'Billboard' who jokingly give the album '4 paw prints' instead of stars, again with the idea of Ed Sheeran's trademark paw print becoming a recognizable characteristic in which people can familiarise themselves with. 

Overall, I feel that my ancillary tasks are quite effective in combination with my main product, as they are both quite serious and adult in look/tone. They both feature an element of the music video I have produced, the digipak has a photo of the girl who features in the video and the magazine advert mentions the video and both pieces write about the fact that it has been nominated for an award. This shows I am not forgetting about my piece as a whole, which was not to create and sell an album, it was to create a successful music video. I feel that people would see the mature style of both pieces and realise it is not just any generic album, and they would see the praise that the music video is getting, and thus be more inclined to buy it than most albums.

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

Elizabeth Rayner Media Power Point (1)

Weekly Updates Week Thirteen

Week Thirteen

5/12/11: We had a first draft of our music video complete for this week, but we had not added in the performance element yet which included the rapper miming to the song, but would do that throughout the week, and have our final draft complete for the deadline, the 16^th of December. I also made my final 'magazine advert' and 'digipak' for our music video 'Little Lady'.

Final Digipak

DIGIPAK RIGHT SIDE UP

DIGIPAK UPSIDE DOWN

Final Magazine Advert

'Little Lady' Music Video First Draft

Weekly Updates Week Twelve

Week Twelve

28/11/11: This week, we knew we were running out of time and so we had to rush to get the footage of the rapper filmed, whilst also continuing to edit and get a first draft of our music video.