Final Evaluation Question One (FINAL)

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

Final music video:

Final Digipak and magazine advertisement: 

For the purposes of this answer I have mentioned Meg Kiely's (a member of the group) AS magazine coursework and treated it as though it were a real media product in order to maintain the 'world' of the artist and video. Here is the final cover of her AS work which, as explained further in the article, was an influence on our A2 project.

I have also used a different name for the photographer in my article. Although I took the images myself, I was unable to use my own name due to the fact that I was playing the role of a 'director'.

Below is the article which I have created as my response to the question. I have put numbers on the left hand side of some of my comments which correspond to pictures placed at the end. These images have been organised individually so that our influences appear first and then our work is beneath.

If you would find it easier to read the article in a different format, I have posted it on Scribd below.

Evaluation Question One

Evaluation Question Two (FINAL)

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

Evaluation Question Three (FINAL)

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question Three

Final Evaluation Question One

Final Evaluation Question Two

Final Evaluation Question Three

Evaluation Question 3

Final Evaluation Question Four

Evaluation Questions on WIX

Here I have made a small website featuring two of my evaluation questions, and some added extras.

http://jessrosegreenfield.wix.com/influxx

Evaluation Question Four FINAL

http://jessrosegreenfield.wix.com/influxx#!album/c61v

Evaluation Question Three FINAL

http://jessrosegreenfield.wix.com/influxx#!audience-feedback/cadp

Evaluation Question Two FINAL

Evaluation Question One FINAL

Audience Feedback Links

Music Video

(Watch on YouTube for the highest quality)

Survey for music video

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TXNNLLP

Jess

Digipak & Poster

http://jessphoebemega2media.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/final-digipak-poster-and-artwork.html

Survey for digipak and poster 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3P8SCZK

Meg

Digipak & Poster

http://jessphoebemega2media.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/final-magazine-advert.html

http://jessphoebemega2media.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/final-digipak_7.html

Survey for digipak and poster 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TNW9H66

Phoebe

Digipak & Poster

http://jessphoebemega2media.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/final-poster.html

http://jessphoebemega2media.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/final-digipak_13.html

Survey for digipak and poster 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3HM8NGK

TO DO LIST- Week Commencing 9/12/13

To Do List- Week commencing 9/12/13
- Complete final evaluation questions by the 20/12/13 final deadline

Evaluation Question 4 Draft

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

Pre Production:
- Blogger- documentation of our work, helped us to receive feedback and collect things which inspired us. Mr Ford and Mr Smith's blogs were also of great use.
- Email (gmail)- emailing the location and organizing various dates for us to book.
- Google Chrome/ Internet Web 2.0- general research/ collection of information
- Youtube- influences from other pre existing music videos/ tutorials about glide cams etc...
- Scribd- interesting format for presenting work.
- Animoto- allowed us to present a pitch to the rest of the group which advised us what to do next.
- Apple Mac, HP computer, windows.
- Tumblr/ Flickr/ Google images= helped us to form ideas for our own video concerning a variety of things such as the styling, make- up etc...
- Tube Chop- used in order to highlight certain parts of a video (in particular Haim's 'Don't Save Me')
- Paint (in order to save screen shots)

Production:
- Panasonic Loomix DMCG6- for taking photos on the day of filming/ behind the scenes images.
- Four artificial lighs- used to make frames brighter, cancel out shadow and retain continuity.
- Large filming camera- in order to achieve shots with great clarity, it was able to record in 1080p.
- Itunes- to play accompanying music when filming.
- Iphone- used along with speakers in order for the music to be heard throughout the entire great hall.
- Photoshop- used when creating the digipak and magazine advertisement.

Post Production:
- YouTube- used to post both the draft and final video on.
- Blogger- used as a platform to exhibit the music video on.
- Final Cut Pro- used to edit our video.

Evaluation Question 3- Draft

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In order to generate audience feedback we are currently organizing a premiere for our music video, whereby questionnaire's will be handed out to the audience and completed after the viewing. Ideally, those who attend will be into Indie/ Synth Pop music and will therefore be aware of conventions used within this genre. Subsequently, we will review the feedback together as a group and make conclusions based on the results.

Below is feedback which I have received throughout the process on all aspects of the course.

Evaluation Question 2- Draft

Evaluation Question 2 Draft

Evaluation Question 1- Draft

Evaluation Question One- Draft

Challenging conventions within wider music genre but not within narrow genre.

Evaluation Question 4 DRAFT

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

Pre-Production:

• Safari- our main source of technology to access websites such as...
• Blogger- updating regular posts of to-do lists, inspiration and general updates which we consistently referred back to. we had a group blog, with each member being an author, in order for each posts to be separate. 
• Google- to accumulate images, information of bands/artists
• Email Accounts- Gmail (group email), Outlook (personal email). This allowed us to email work to each other, and to contact our location and 'MediaDog' critic. 
• Twitter Account- _INFLUXXmusic, we could communicate with the target audience, streaming recent tweets of the planning to build anticipation. We included pictures of the band members and teasers. We also followed similar artists to INFLUXX for a more realistic approach. 
• Scribd- at this current stage of production, our coursework hand-in dates were shown on here, making it easier to plan ahead in an efficient way. 
• Flickr- used to upload pictures of the band, with links on our blog so our audience could view them in a presentable and professional way.
• Apple Macs- used to make everything happen
• Tube Chops- used for Au Revoir Simone's video 'Somebody Who', to separate the scenes we were inspired by. It was easier to view as they were set at specific timings in the video, it saved us a lot of time, resulting in us not having to watch through their entire music video. 
• iPhone- was used to update tweets, and blog posts on the blogger app.
• Animoto- here we presented our 25 word pitch to our class, it included the style of music production, target audience and relevant key words that were related to the genre in a particular way. 
• Tumblr- similar to google images, we picked out many images of people we think the target audience would look like. It also helped in the styling of our artists at a later date. 
• Gigposters.com- I used this website to gain ideas and inspiration for my own magazine advert/poster. Many arty and conceptual designs were featured on here, which encouraged me to continue with the idea of creating a unique print. 

Production:

• Filming camera- we used the Sony HDV HDR-FX1E filming camera, it was very large, and proved to result in a high quality and professional looking music video. 
• Lighting- four artificial lights were used, two of which were my own creating the basic light seen in the music video. The other two were property of the school, they were soft boxes and created the main brightness and cancelled out any of the shadows and other unwanted darkness. 
• iPhone- as the other girls in my group were filming and in charge of music, I filmed 'behind the scenes' footage, and took pictures which I then posted on Instagram and Twitter. We also used our phones to play the music on the speakers in order for Ellie to lip-sync. 

Post-Production: 

• Final Cut Pro X- This was extremely useful and an easy editing software to edit our music video on. Each group member edited one minute of the video, whilst we completed our ancillary texts and other media studies related work. 
• Blogger- Here we posted links to the music video and to-do lists, feedback was also posted on here. 
• YouTube- We uploaded out draft and final version of our music video here. 
• FireWire cable- As the video camera was a few years old, it only carried tape. Therefore we had to get access to a firewire cable which imports the video onto final cut pro. 

Evaluation Question 3 DRAFT

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We are currently sending off questionnaires to our peers of similar ages and target audience (of the Indie/Synth pop genre) in order to gain feedback on their opinion of the premiere of our final music video. The feedback that we will receive will be truly beneficial for future major projects like this one. We will discuss as a group the positives and negatives of the main project, as well as proving to have targeted well the audience and the genre. 

Audience feedback for music video-https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TXNNLLP

Audience feedback for poster and digipak- https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3P8SCZK

Here are some examples of the feedback I have received throughout my A2 coursework, including group feedback and from my own ancillary texts.

Evaluation Question 2 DRAFT

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1 DRAFT

Evaluation Question 1 DRAFT

EVALUATION QUESTION 4- DRAFT

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

Pre-Production:
- Twitter (personal account and Influxx's profile)
- Blogger (group blog, Mr Smith, Mr Ford, peers)
-Email (Googlemail and Outlook)
-Internet Web 2.0
-Scribd
-Google (imgaes, info on bands etc)
-Flickr
-Apple Mac
-PCs
-Tubechop
-iPhone (apps such as Blogger Plus were used on the go, Twitter etc)
-Safari
-Internet Explorer (web 2.0)
-Animoto
-Tumblr

Production:
-Canon Slr camera
-Lighting
-Photoshop
-Filming camera
-iTunes
-iPhone

Post Production:
-Blogger
-YouTube
-Final Cut Pro
-iTunes
-Apple Mac

EVALUATION QUESTION 3- DRAFT

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Below are a couple of surveys we have put together, we hope to premiere our music video in front of a select group of people that will hopefully fit our 'target audience' criteria. The information we receive from this feedback will be discussed as a group and will hopefully give us some idea as to whether or not our main and ancillary texts were effective from our target market/audience's perspective.

Click here to take survey   Audience feedback survey (Music Video)    

Click here to take survey   Audience feedback survey (Digipak & magazine advert)

 

Below is all the feedback I have received from my peers on my blog posts (research and planning), the main product (music video) and my ancillary texts (Digipak and magazine advert).

EVALUATION QUESTION 2- Draft

Evaluation Question 2- Draft

EVALUATION QUESTION 1- DRAFT

Evaluation Question 1- Draft

TO DO LIST- Week Commencing 2/12/13

To Do List:
-After completing our final music video on Friday we have now been set a new deadline.
By this friday (6/12/13) we must all complete our draft evaluation questions, this is what we will now be working on in lesson time and other spare time (if necessary).
There are 4 evaluation questions altogether, see below:


Evaluation Question 1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?\

Evaluation Question 2 How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

Evaluation Question 3 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 4 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The evaluation questions are marked out of 20. 

Final Music Video

Final Music Video

We have completed our final music video, however we are unable to upload it to YouTube due to the computer with the video on being unavailable as their are other students still yet to finish their final music video.
We have exported the video to our desktop, it is ready to upload on Monday morning when the computer will be free.

Post Production- Update

Today is the deadline for our final music video, we have finished editing in terms of putting the clips into final cut pro and matching the lip syncing to the song. Now we must make small tweaks to the final cut to really bring it up to the high standard we are aiming for e.g. ensuring all lip syncing is accurate, clips are cut to the beat of the song where necessary, change any slow-motion/repeating or rewinding shots and changing the exposure on some of our footage to match the rest of the music video (some footage we filmed for the draft version of the video is being used again in the find cut, to ensure continuity we are changing the exposure to change some shots that look slightly 'cold' in colour/lighting).

Below are some screen shots of the editing stages in final cut pro:

 ^ Retiming/rewinding a shot and how I did this.

 ^ Editing a shot into slow-motion to create a more smooth and 'gliding' look.

^ Editing the exposure on some of the shots from our draft music video, using the colour board which can be seen in the top right corner of the program.

Post Production

Having filmed our music video last Tuesday (19/11/13), we are now embarking on the post production stage of the process. We have converted all of the footage from the tapes onto one of the school Mac's and have imported them into Final Cut Pro. The creation of our draft video was a valuable experience as it has equipped us with basic knowledge of this editing programme which means that we can work more efficiently this time around. In accordance with this, we found that when editing our draft music video it worked well if we were each allocated approximately a minute each to edit.

As a result, we have decided to separate the work between us- Jess taking responsibility for the first minute of the video, Meg focusing on the second minute and I will be editing the final minute of the video. This works in our favour as it means that we can be time efficient because we are able to work on the video at times when it is most convenient for us, even if other members of the group aren't available. Consequently, Jess has now finished her editing and Meg is hoping to have completed her section of the video by the end of today(27/11/13). Proceeding from this, I will aim to finish the editing process tomorrow so that Friday can be dedicated to the three of us working collaboratively in order to amend any minor mistakes. Despite the fact that we have all individually contributed to the video, we have also been assisting one another if necessary.

As we have altered various aspects of our video from the draft version, we decided to create an entirely new storyboard and work from there. Because of the fact that some shots have been kept the same as before while others are completely brand new, there has been slight confusion when reviewing what we have filmed. It has also been slightly difficult to work through the storyboard for the new video as we were unable to film some of the shots due to the fact that the location (The City Rooms) had decorated their large ballroom with drapes which were previously not there- which created continuity issues for us. In accordance with this, we have also struggled to keep the lighting consistent throughout. This is because when we filmed our draft music video we only had three artificial lights as oppose to our final filming day where we had four. In an attempt to overcome these problems in the post production stage, we are hoping to adjust the contrast and brightness to ensure that all of the shots look similar.

We are continuing to work on the editing of our music video so that we have completed it by 29/10/13 and will meet the official deadline.

Audience Feedback

Magazine Advertisement 

In terms of the poster, I think that the photograph used is incredibly effective as it is of a high quality, well lit and presents the girl well. Within the Pop genre, artists own appearances are highly important and work as one of their main selling points- the use of a large midshot shows that you have acknowledged this and that you are well informed about conventions of the genre. The fact that the girl is making direct eye contact with the consumer is also an effective feature as it encourages viewers to feel that they have a more personal connection to the artist (also drawing the fans own eye in). Additionally, you have styled the artist well in accordance with your target market (adolescent girls) as she is dressed modestly and appears quite wholesome which won't intimidate fans.

The use of minimal text on your poster also works well as it retains the focus on the image and keeps the design simple and clean cut. The composition of the overall poster is aided by the fact that you have positioned the text to the right hand side. This shows that you have considered the fact that people generally look from left to right and therefor consumers attention will initially be on the photography and then proceed to the lettering. I like the way you have separated the text with different colours- black and pink- as this creates a distinction between the artists own name and the title of her album. I also think that the use of different sized text is good as the more important information is prominent.

In terms of what could have been improved, I think that you could of rearranged the imagery and text on your poster in order to include some ratings/ reviews as this is often a convention of Pop magazine adverts. However, I realise that you wanted to make the image of the artist a focal point and therefore enlarged it so that there was no space for ratings or reviews. 

Digipak

The comments that I previously made about the image on your poster apply to the one used on the cover of your digipak (as they are the same). The fact that you have used the same image is effective in some ways as it links both products together well. The style of both your poster and digipak correspond successfully too. However dissimilar to your poster, where the image was placed on the left hand side, I like the fact that you have centralized it. This creates a pleasing composition and allows the photograph to take command of the cover. Yet again, you have kept text to a minimum which I think works well on the cover as it means that there are no distractions from the imagery of the artist. The title 'Keys' has been aligned well and the bold, pink font manages to distinguish itself from the photograph behind- ensuring that it isn't lost on the page. I also like the way you have designed the back cover and the way which you have centralized the track list and corresponding legal information/ record label. Your digipak would be even better, in my opinion, if you had made the two inside panels white to connect with the back and front cover. However I don't think the fact that they are black is an issue- it's subjective. 

Digipak Booklet

I think the fact that you have included a small lyric booklet to go inside your digipak is a really nice detail and shows that you have thoroughly considered all the ways to make the product more interesting for consumers.Your use of additional pictures of the artist in the booklet was a good choice as it means that people will be more inclined to buy the digipak in order to get the unseen images. It has been put together really well and I think the fact that you have reduced the opacity of the pictures beneath the lyrics is helpful as it means the text is easily legible. The 'with love' lettering also works well as it tricks buyers into thinking each album is more individualistic (despite the fact that it has been printed on them all).

Overall, I really like both of the products you have created- taking into consideration your genre of music. I think that you have considered conventions well and effectively composed all aspects of your work. 

TO DO LIST- Week Commencing 25/11/13

To Do List- Week Commencing 25/11/13:

• After getting some more footage last week, we have since started editing the final cut of our music video. 
• The deadline for our final music video is this Friday 29/11/13, we are going to split the music video equally into 3 sections between myself, Phoebe and Jess (approximately 1mins 13 seconds each) this worked well during the editing of our draft video so we are going do the same this time round.
• If we have any spare time this week after completing our music video we are hoping to create a 'bloopers'/outtake video that will show our experience throughout filming.

Audience Feedback

IHere I have given my peers some feedback on their DigiPak and poster. Hopefully I will receive some feedback which will help me gain new ideas and to pick up on any mistakes that I have made on my final designs of the DigiPak and poster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Review of the filming day - 2

On Tuesday the 19th of October we returned to The City Rooms in Leicester to improve a few shots for our music video that we were displeased with. As Alex's contribution to the music video was minimal we decided it was unnecessary for him to attend however we did have Ellie with us and managed quite well with focusing on shots featuring her. When we arrived at our location we encountered a huge problem. There were large drapes placed over the windows and the ceiling near the chandeliers. Therefore we couldn't film some of the shots we planned to do, it would mean we would either have to refilm the entire music video, or keep some of the shots from the previous draft that we made. We only had five hours in the venue, so we didn't have time to refilm. We did ask the events manager when the drapes will be down, just in case we could film again on another day, however they will not be removed until late April. Phoebe and Meg then went back to the new storyboard to edit some shots that we initially wanted to create, and they created a list of all the shots that we couldn't do due to the drapes, and shots that we could still film . This took up a lot of our time, but as they were doing this I was getting Ellie prepared and made up ready for filming. We prepared very similarly to last time, Meg created a list which highlighted the equipment and other items with us. (You can see all of the previous posts we made prior to filming). We all had the same roles again, and proved to work better under a tight schedule as well as setting up the lights and getting Ellie ready in a quicker time than last time. We managed to redo some shots of Ellie, and to make it easier when it comes to editing she sang the lyrics instead of miming. The footage we have seen so far looks really good, especially the lighting. By having the four lights it made the shots more warm in colour without any shadows. In our draft video some of the shots were out of focus, this was because we left the camera on auto-focus, and the camera only picked up on the walls behind Ellie. When we refilmed the close up shots of Ellie's lips we put the camera on manual focus. This created a stunning focus and made the shots more proffessional. Although we were dissapointed with the aesthetics of the venue this time round, we worked better as a team and managed to get through the schedule on time quickly and efficiently.