Blog Closed

My blog is now closed as I have completed all of this years work. I am happy with the standard with my research planning and construction and feel we have all worked well this year and our work is a true reflection of this.

Evaluation Question 4

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

This is the camera which we had access to use for our music video filming. The camera is the Canon Legria FS200, as it was a school camera the quality was not the best, but as we had no alternative we made the most of it. One good aspect of the camera was that it was very mobile as it is only a small camera and also it was very suitable for the job we needed to do. We got to grips with how the camera worked very quickly and developed our skills with it by using different techniques such as; zooming in and out, panning and a variation of different camera angles. Also the good thing about the camera was that after we had filmed a clip we could watch it back. This was because of the small screen attached to the side of the camera. Due to the fact we could watch it back it became easier to look at what had gone wrong in the clip so therefore we could shoot it again if we needed to. As well as the camera we also had to borrow a tripod from school, these were also quite temperamental and often broke while we were using them or we were given a broken one in the first place.

This is the software which we used to help us edit our music video. It is Adobe Premier Pro, it was a very good software to use and once we got to grips of how to use it, it then became very simple and effective to use. However to start with it is very hard to work because it is so detailed. Due to the fact that we used this software our music,very good and have the effects needed instead of just clip’s being shown after another clip. This software was good in the fact that the different techniques we used on there made the music video flow better. 
Other technical websites we used were blogger and Youtube. These sites have been vital in research and planning. Blogger was used to post about our whole production. It was used as a diary to post about research and planning, construction and anything else which happened in our process to complete the project throughout the year. It was simple and easy to use, we even had apps on our phones to make it more convenient to blog. It had good features to allow us to embed presentations and videos when needed which were vital to show our ideas and research. Youtube was great to research, we used other music videos to gain inspiration and to compare to ours and our ideas. We also used it to gain advice as we made Youtube channel and gained feedback and advice from the public which really helped us to progress. Again it was simple and straightforward to use we were very pleased with how reliable and easy it was to upload a video and never had problem with either sites and they were both easily accessible.

We used the internet and predominately Google to help our research and development progress and helped us analyse similar products to ours, we used it in the construction process to construct our website and Digipak, Google has always been very reliable for us and helped us overall adapted our Blog. Google allowed to gain vital information we needed for our whole media piece quickly and efficiently  this was either form research digipaks to gaining emails for production companies we may need to email. It made everything a lot more quicker and convenient for us when gaining any information we could not secure anywhere else but the internet.

We also used Prezi to present most of our ideas and presentations. This is a great website and software to use to present in a new interesting way, it allows things to be shown in a more abstract image. The way in which it works keeps the audience more engaged whilst presenting as it jumps from slide to slide in different ways and using different shapes and images. This is alot more fun to work with and to share information than a power point  It was simple for us to make an account after our school registered on the website. Its clear intructions meant we got the hang of how it works very quickly. We then realised it had a great feature which allowed us to get the HTML so we could actually embed the presentation on our blog so that you want have to leave our blog whilst looking at it which made it convenient and an interesting feature on our blogs.

To create our website we used a website called Weebly. This website enabled us make a homepage and have tabs leading off of that to make our actual website look as good as possible. This website was easy to use and even easier to make ours website look professionally made. It had very advanced features that we were not to sure about, but the simple ones were all we needed to produce the website at the level of our standards.

To make our Digipak we used a program called Adobe Photoshop, this is a very good but technical program, with all of its functions and advanced options, at first it became slightly daunting. After a while of tweaking and trial and error we began to get used to the way in which it works. We used Youtube videos to guide us through how to use some of the settings this helped loads and allowed us to use some of the settings on Adobe that we before didn't even know how to operate. We began to get used to Photoshop and used its many options to our advantage when putting our Digipak together. We feel that the imagery and professional look we were after and we were pleased with how reliable and professional Adobe Photoshop turned out to be. 

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Firstly we made a questionnaire for people in our class and our families to complete, the questionnaire consisted of different questions ranging from ‘what is your favourite genre of music’ to ‘who is your favourite singer/musician’. This was good because it gave us some idea of what people liked and what would be good to incorporate into our music video.

Secondly of all we had several ideas in mind, that we wanted to do, we had to eliminate this down to one. To do this we had a class discussion on the different ideas. The class was asked which idea they thought sounded the best. Then we did a Q+A on the one they thought was better. They took it in turns to ask us different questions about our idea, E.G What does the drink represent? These questions were good because we could establish a good idea that people did like and what they thought would look good in a music video. It also allowed us to determine whether our idea was strong and what improvements we could possibly make to make the over all out come  more attractive to the audience.

Thirdly we had a draft version created early on for our teacher to have a look at and advise us on anything that would make it better. From the advice we were given we changed and in some cases re- filmed a lot of the footage to make it as good as possible. The advice from our teacher was really good because he is the one who will provisionally mark our work, he gave us the idea to change to black and white in some of the clips to make it look rustic as if it were in the past.

Aswell s all of this we also used Youtube to receive feedback from the general public. Uploading our draft on to Youtube allowed everyone to view it and to comment their own thoughts and opinions. We were open to constructive criticism and took any comments and advice given on board. By allowing such a broad audience to view our work it really gave us an insite as to how well we were achieving our goal, by the standard and representation of the music video through others eyes. on the right is a print screen from a comment we received on YouTube a while ago from our draft. This really helped us and used the good comments as motivation and to know we were heading in the right direction.

Overall I believe the feedback we received from everyone was very valuable. It helped us to decide on our final idea and even more so when we had started the work when the advice allowed us to change things around and hopefully improve our grade overall. We developed what we feel a solid Idea and production from all of the feedback. We hope we took as much as we could on board and listened carefully to what everyone had to say when it came to improving and progressing.

Evaluation Question 2

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

I believe that the combination of our main Production (Music Video) and our ancillary texts (website and DigiPak)have both been very effective and successful because they all have similarities and a relationship. Each of our media texts are linked together! For both the DigiPak and Website we have used screen shots from our main production (Music Video). In these screen shots we have included the characters from the music video, this is effective because as an audience, the ancillary texts offer more advertisement of the main product. Unlike the Music video, and even the website, a DigiPak can be read/seen, passed through other audiences, such as family and friends. The website also is very effective because it offers more information on the band/artist, for example new music coming out, tours, interviews or simply pictures of events and concerts. In the society we live in, when we like a media product we tend to want to know more about the background it came from. For example if someone hears the song they will want to watch the music video, and then from there they will be able to access the website of the band/artist and then from there they can order albums, singles and DigiPaks.

This is a screen grab of the inside panels of our DigiPak and the main screen of our website. They are similar because they follow a similar theme of have the same background with the wall. Also we have incorporated the same props, we have got the guitar which also features in our music video and so does the alcohol. This is effective because it links all our music video production and the ancillary tasks together.

We researched into other websites and digipaks to help us make ours, this was useful because it helped show us that most DigiPaks incorporate a common theme, whether it be colour theme (we used black and white in our video and for our DigiPak), or it could be Props, like what we have used. Due to us looking into similar products it enabled us to understand what is effective for these construction processes.

The common theme that can distinguish our products is the incorporation of the black and white colour scheme and also the props which we included, which all come together and link with the music video (main Production) and the DigiPak and Website (ancillary tasks).

Evaluation Question 1

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

 

Final Production

This our final production which we have uploaded on to Youtube. We hope to get responses from the public on our video. We are not quite happy with the quality of the final product but we could do nothing about the camera quality as we had no other option. We have still tried to make the best with it and have come up with the visual image we imagined although we would have liked to include more close-ups of Adam Lomas (the narrative) and more memories of the relationship running through out the whole clip. But these clips became unachievable because of the time frame we left ourselves and the actress we selected was not quite up for the role as much as we thought she would be so it set us back dramatically. And later on found it too late to replace her. But overall we feel we have made the best our of the clips we secured some of them being interesting and engaging shots for the audience.

Final Website

This is our final website, we havent adjhusted it much since first editing it as we all knew what we roughly wanted it to look like. It is clear and the picture represents the music video with the characters and the props. We are glad with the final product and are happy with how it looks visually and feel it portrays a professional image, although we wish we would have . It construction was on weebly which were all very keen of.

Link to website: http://neoncloudproductions.weebly.com/

Editing the website

This a print screen of us editing the website, we selected atemplate andf then added our own titles and pages and images. It is a simple software and was very easy and straight forward to use. The options were clear and had everything we needed to use.  

DigiPak

This is our final version of our digipak. We have spent allot of time research and analysing into other digipaks, to help to recognise features that we may need to include. Some of these for example are; bar code, writing on the spine, lyrics and most importantly a reoccurring theme. Which we have chosen as the iconic wall in our video and the black and white imagery. We used the black and white imagery in our film to represent the past. We feel this looked a more professional look for our Digipak as it kept every scene and picture looking very similar and could easily be identified together. We kept the guitar and the alcohol the centre of attention making them to spot under the CD in the middle of the pack, this is because we thought they are the most important and symbolic props throughout the whole video, this was separating the boy and girl on the album which symbolises what happens in the song and music video we produced. We feel this is a reflection of our music video and we are pleased with the final outcome.

Website Research - The Process of Their Construction

Websites have many functions and can be used in various fashions; a website can be a personal website, a commercial website, a government website or a nonprofit organizationwebsite. Websites can be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, and are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose. Any website can contain a hyperlink to any other website, so the distinction between individual sites, as perceived by the user, can be blurred.

Websites are written in, or dynamically converted to, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and are accessed using a software interface classified as a user agent. Web pages can be viewed or otherwise accessed from a range of computer-based and Internet-enabled devices of various sizes, including desktop computers, laptops, PDAs and cell phones.

A website is hosted on a computer system known as a web server, also called an HTTP server. These terms can also refer to the software that runs on these systems which retrieves and delivers the web pages in response to requests from the website's users.

Construction of a website

1) Template Stage - An accepted template is the blueprint for building the website. The look and feel of the website is designed from this template. This is the first stage of the construction of a website.

2) Build Stage - This part of the process may last a week or two, or a month or more depending on the complexity of the website. This is the stage where they start putting together features of the website after the template is made. This is the second stage of the construction of a website.

3) Move-in-stage - The website programming is finished after the “Build” stage. So now the owners of the website can add more features to finish of the website, eg photos. This is the final stage of the construction of a website.

Digi Pak research - The process of their construction

The CD DigiPak is a modern, stylish alternative to the standard CD duel Case. CD Digipaks are a custom printed card packaging that can hold one or more CDs which are held in place with plastic trays (CD flexi trays) which are glued into the digipak.

CD DigiPaks are especially popular in the music industry for CD albums as well as multiple CD disc sets. CD Digipaks give a product an expensive professional look and feel, especially when well-designed CD artwork is combined with clever use of specialist print.

Digipaks were originally only seen as limited edition or specialist CD products however improvements in CD production and CD packaging printing techniques has meant that this sleek CD packaging solution is now available at much lower quantities and at much lower prices.

Also CD Digipaks are made out of card stock (with recycled card options available). The most common CD Digipaks is the 4 panel Digipak which opens like a book. However 6 panel CD Dipipaks are also very popular, providing a larger canvas for CD artwork and text information about the CD, our production digi-pak is a 6 panelled one. 8 panel and even 10 panel CD Digipaks are also available.

Unlike CD duel Cases Digipak-style packaging is made from cardboard and as such can be considered less resistant to wear than CD duel cases. Disc Factory minimise this issue by applying a protective gloss or matt varnish to all CD Digipak packaging as standard, the matt lamination finish (a process in which we add a thin transparent plastic film to the surface of card packaging) as this extra plastic coating gives the CD Digipak even more rigidity, providing not only increased longevity, but also making the treated surfaces water resistant too. Matt Lamination also has the added benefit of giving the finished surface of the digipak a soft finish that is really smooth to the touch.

Disc Factory’s also offer DVD DigiPaks. These are constructed in exactly the same was as a CD DigiPak but whereas the CD DigiPak has the dimensions of a standard CD case the DVD DigiPak is a similar size to a normal amaray style DVD case.

Organisations of Actors, Cameras, Locations and Props

Actors

There are 4 charcaters in our music video; Dom clarke, Morgan Hunter, Adam Lomas and Rob Pinto. Dom is the main charcater the whole piece is about his life and how he copes with the trouble sof a relationship by drinking. It shows past and present, the good times with his girlfriend and the argument and then the continual drinking before. He is dressed like yourt average teenager in casual everyday clothing, this makes the situation and stroy seem more realistic and can relate to our target audience. he uses alchol, is a pain relief to hel;p him cope with his break up, we know he doesnt like the thought of it though as he smashes the bottle furiously in one part to show he no longer whats to be dependant on it.

 Roberto is Dom's friend in the pub at the video he almost intises Dom to drink alchol by buying him drinks by the time he arrives. He will feel under pressre to drink. He recieves a text to go pub, we know the friend is their to try to cheer him up and make all his worries go away temporarily. It is the only part in the film we see him being happy.

Morgan is Dom's ex-girlfriend she appears near the end of the film, we see him reminscing about happy times with her for example this shot of them smiling on a bridge. We have put these scenes in black and white as they are the past and he is remembering them, symbolising his thoughts. She is also dressed like a typical teenager in casual clothes.



Adam Lomas is the narrative in the music video we see him appear right at the beginning and around dom when he is drinking, the purpose is so he is telling the stroy as if it really happened to him, this situation that is being portrayed. He plays the guitar in time with the music so it seems as if he is telling a story. He is also dressed in very casual clothing to match the rest of the characters makes him blend in and seem as though he is just one of them. He witnesses the situation happening to Dom.

Locations

In our music video we have several locations mainly revolved around Dom's house.This is where we seem drinking and waking up it is an iconic location throughout the whole video. It is his on 'safe zone' whenever he is drunk and alone he just comes home and sits on the sofa or is in the kitchen. We have the harrier pub is another location, this is where he meets with his friends, it is obviously a great location to symbolise alcohol. We see Dom at his happiest here with his friends whilst he is drtinking and chatting, forgetting about his worries. Other locations are based outside near a lake and greenary, this is symnbolic of happy places which works well with his happy memories. Great location to portaray happiness and romance.

Costumes

The costumes all of the characters are casual and fashionable and typical clothes teenagers wear especially our target audience. They wear; hoodies, jeans, chinos, trainers, beanies etc. all look causal but not scruffy, showing a 'cool' look.

Props

The propse which we use in our video are shown on our digipak. These are the guitar, this is an important prop and we have many close ups of this, it symbolises our acoustic genre. It is also the instrument in the song so when adam plays it it goes with the song in the background. Alcohol was another important prop, this was used to show dom coping with his situation it is included in almost every seen with dome some with focus so we understand that it is important to him and plays a good role and how he is so dependant on it and it his way of getting through his problems. Another prop was a mobile phone, this was used for friends to communicate, the usal stereotypical way for teenagers. It was used to help change scenes from Dom's house to the Pub and to introduce the charcaters name.

Analysing Digi-Pak

This is an example of a digipak from a Rhianna album. It has reacurring theme to it as the front and back and inside are all in black and white and have similar taken images. This makes the digi-pak flow and look overall more professional. After doing plenty of research we have realised that keep a constant theme is important as the audience can then relate you everything together without thinking about it. It lets them establish and recognize you through imagery. This is something important which we think will be vital and important for us to include in to ours.

Codes and Conventions of a website

Content- Websites with factual information may look different compared to a site for entertainment, this may include factual websites, will have a lot more text and information and will look a lot more formal, rather too entertainment websites which will have a lot more graphics and will be more graphalogically pleasing to the audience. There are different titles on different sites as they would be focus on only one type of information. We will be using a lot of images which will link specifically to our music video and can be recognisable to our 'brand'.

For our website we are going to include imagery to make it automatically recognisable to our digipak this will keep the constant them running through and will allow the audience to establish us as a company. We will try to make our website look as professional as possible and will make sure that everything is clearly laid out and matches the theme we are going for.

Analysing Music Video - Lightning Bolt

This is a music video by Jake Bugg he has a style of music we all enjoy and is similar to our chosen genre as it is acoustic. He is 18 years old so is the same age as our target audience. The music video consists of fast shots to keep with the music, it has old effects on it making it seem like a traditional film made a while ago giving it a very antique image. He narrates through the song as it refers back to him singing but also him walking through the streets as the story is being told. This is what we plan on doing as Adam tells the story of Dom's relationship situation. The shots are very random and switch constantly in time with the beat around different places, although it does keep a reoccurring theme of this, vintage feel with keeps the video interesting a fun to watch. Especially as it is not just focused on the singer which can be boring for the audience, we will use this technique when filming.

Analysing Music Videos - Bastille

This is a Bastille song called Flaws, it is of an alternative genre, something similar to our choice. I have chosen to analyse this music video as it is very different to many others I have previously done. It doesn't follow a specific story line and is a very quirky piece. Although what it does do is follow the pace of the music with its actions, as the music is slow, so is everything happening in the video. We see the main character sing along many times throughout the video but not the whole way, this has become a usual feature in music videos and something we would like to incorporate. The song its self is revolving relationship as is ours, we see him in arcades and enjoying times with girls who have masks on this relates to his lyrics, "flaws". We are going to use the idea of seeing the relationship in happy times and reverting back to our lyrics and title "drunk" as we see a constant occurance of alcohol throughout the music video. Throughout the rest of the video there is many random parts of action which is enjoyable to watch, the main character and singer taking center stage, which we also will try to replicate in our own piece.

Analysing Music Videos - Scouting for girls 'love how it hurts'

This song and video "Love How It Hurts" is a single by the English indie pop band Scouting for Girls. I have decided to analyze this music video because it follows a narrative (like our music production) of a love triangle. The music video shows a young geeky boy falling in love with a young girl as they soon started to become friends a cool bad boy comes over and takes the girl away. The geeky boy tried to give her a tape holding 'Love How It Hurts' on it. Yet again the cool boy interrupts and breaks it apart. Next they have all grown up and he is still in love with her. The geeky boy runs to meet her, intercut with scenes of the girl and geeky boy. He tries to marry her and (yet again) the cool boy interrupts, throws the ring off a nearby cliff and tries to walk off with the girl again. The music video ends when the girl stops walking and looks back at him.This music video has fast and slow clips, depending on the speed of the song; it also includes slow motion clips. The video incorporates a lot of bright colours to emphasize the upbeat song. This is similar to our music production because it follows a narrative and has happy and sad time for the relationship

Easter Holidays

Over the easter holidays we have completed the website and finished filming a couple of more clips. The websitewas made on weebly.com we found the software easyu to use and did not take long for us to understand how it works. The website is simple and clear to understand with the seperate links leading to different webpages. The opening picture is one from our digipak and is of all of the characters in the production. As we are called 'Neon Cloud Productions' we have used the neon colour for the seperate page links.

Actress Issues

We have been having issues filming as the actress has a busy time schedule and hasnt had the time to really film. She is not being ver cooperative but it is to late to chnage actors now. We have got most of the footage we need but will need to re-film a couple of bits we are slightly unsure about. We have looked over our draft and noticed some basic errors we are going out to correct these.

Construction

Over the past few weeks we have been filming different clips and have been trying to put our whole piece together. We are haven't changed our narrative and our still sticking with the break-up and how people may resort to different things to help themselves, in this case drink. We have chnaged some of our locations from our recce shots but stayed along the same lines, incorporating th epub location and outside shots with the girlfriend. We have also started to put together our digipack and have incorporated the main props in the picture using the guitar and drink, also have all of the characters on the pack. We are on track and still have a small bit to film to fill in a few gaps but its starting to all come together. We have all contributed ideas and different thoughts throughout the construction which has made the shots alot more inventive and different to what we originally planned.

First rough draft

In this draft we have very limited shots as most are still waiting to be edited, we are missing the break up with the girlfriend and plenty more drinking shots which we are going to be focussing on, in the next few weeks to perfect. This draft has allowed us to see what techniques we could incorporate into our work.

First Draft Review

At the start of the music video it shows the main character Dom, waking up to an alarm clock with alcohol in his hand, and around his room, this shows that he has had a rough night due to the break-up. When he opens his curtains to look outside, he picks up a beer can and then throws it on his bed, then it comes back into his hand (we edited this) this shows that he is trying to get rid of the alcohol but it keeps coming back to him and this is due to his heartache. We then incorporated footage in black and white to show the relationship, this is because it shows that the relationship is now in the past because they have broken up, so it shows flashbacks of what they used to be like (happy). The draft ends with him on his own with alcohol and he receives a text from a friends asking him to go pub. 

We feel that the first draft is good and will defiantly enable us to build on it in order for us to improve it. However clearly the video is not finished, but we have many shots to put into the video. Things what could be improved on is shorter clips so it flows a bit more as a music video.

Shooting Script

This is an example of one of the sheets of our shooting script. It shows the shot location, the actors and props required and the date we did the shooting. This is a helpful perk to have it kept everything organised and in line, this minimized errors and saved us time not having to re-film.

Story Board

These are a few shots of our storyboard. They show the different scenes throughout our music video. They also show the lighting, sound, mis-en-scene and duration of the clip. These storyboards will help us with our filming, because we ill have an idea of what we want to produce.

Codes and conventions of a website, Content

Content- Websites with factual infromation may look different compared to a site for entertainment, this may include factual websites, will have alot more text and information and will look alot more formal, rather too entertainment websites which will have alot more graphics and will be more graphalogically pleasing to the audience. There are different titles on different sites as they would be focus on only one type of information. We will be using alot of images which will link specifically to our music video and can be recognicable to our 'brand'.

Codes and Conventions of a website layout and Design

Layout and Design usability - Easy to use site with clear areas for naviation around the website. Grid System- Separate sections of a website to present information in small, easy to access segments. Centre of Page- Used for main content with navigation tools on the left and/or across the top of the page and links to more infromation on the right. Background and Font colour- Used to separate different types of information. Images- Used to illustrate as much as possible to add visual interest.

Weather conditions

Yesterday and Tuesday we decided not to film as it was the bes thing to do ragarding health and saftey and continuity. Thye whole local are and places we had considered to film at are covered in snow and ice, which has delayed our filming. But we are substituting this with working on our webpage and codes and conventions.

Analysing Music Videos - Ed Sheeran "A Team"

This is a music video by Ed Sheeran; this was one of his first major song releases. This is the artist which we are using for our music video, so I thought analysing one of his other songs and music videos would be beneficial to enable us to identify him as an artist and his genre of music. This song is similar to the song we are using because it is a Folk ballad. The song also is a narrative like our production, this song follows the struggles of a women’s life, and how she is a drug addict and will do anything for money. The woman is suffering in life and this video represents that, like our production it represents suffering. This song is similar to hits likeSuzanne Vega's "Luka" (about child abuse), 10,000 Maniacs' "Like the Weather" (depression) and Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" (alcoholism)", these are all songs that shade their heavy topics under a melodic canopy. The lightening in this video is a contrast of black and white; this is similar to our production again because we will incorporate black and white to emphasize the past. Ed Sheeran’s songs often follow a narrative; this is good for us because it means we can portray this in our production. The video also shows slow clips to elongate the story; this is very effective because it enables the audience to understand the narrative. It also incorporates fast editing to show that people are going past her fast, but she is just sat as if her life is coming to a stop. Overall this video is great, because it portrays a understandable narrative, which consequently will allow the audience to keep watching and connect with the song and video.