Final Products

EVALUATION QUESTION 4

EVALUATION 4 

EVALUATION QUESTION 3

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

 

Youtube - A worldwide social media used to upload, view and share videos. It is one of the technologies I, during the period of this unit, referred back to countless amount of times. I often used youtube to analyse different pop videos and to obtain ideas, concepts and themes to incorporate into our video. The suggestion bar also came in handy when researching videos as it usually shows different artist within the same genre

As we can see here these screenshots are from a previous blog which I was explaining why my group had so many costume changes. The shots shown are from Youtube and proved very helpful when proving my point on costume changes 

Further more  I used vimeo, another video sharing website, to view multiple students work to see how they worked and how i can better myself and my group. This gave me some idea s as to what to do and what not to do and proved helpful when choosing locations (being careful not to choose locations which have been already used several times) 

MEDIA CONSTRUCTION -Final Cut pro - Final cut pro is the software in which we edited our videos. As apposed to last year this year I think that this time around I have tackled final cut with more confidence. In our video You see various different shot types and cuts which are common of a pop videos. I used final cut to edit clips (colour, length, duration, add effects etc.) 

FILMING EQUIPMENT - Cameras obviously played one the most important parts to our coursework, Capturing our video. 

PHOTOSHOP - Photoshop is the software we used to create our ancillary products. It was very handy as it is not a mediocre piece of soft ware. It served very helpful when trying to create high quality digipaks. I used photoshop to edit Brightness, Cut and crop images (as seen above)

BLOGGER - The beginning of the unit we where reminded that we need to get cracking with our research blogs because it will come in handy when looking for ideas for our videos. This technology is arguably one of the most important in the course as it is one of the main aspects to this unit. I used blogger to:

• Conduct artist research
• Post progress reviews 
• View student blogs (for inspiration) 

TWITTER AND FACEBOOK - We created a twitter account to create awareness as to the project we where taking part in and to promote our work. However, we didn't Create a Facebook page. Last year i created a facebook for a similar task and it proved non helpful. After trial and error, it was clear to me that more people are using Twitter then they are Facebook so for this reason we decided to scrap the idea of creating one (Time effieciency) 

EVALUATIONS QUESTION 2

How effective is the combination of your main product (Video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisement)

Links between Media products are very essential. Artist tend to do little things like add visual links between the Tv adverts, album covers and music videos. For example, in Ed Sheeran - Drunk we see he has a cat as a prop. This links in with his album cover in the corner he includes a cats paw. Little links like this are used to increase appeal and sales.

Another example is with Angel (Sirach Charles) In his video 'Wonderful' we see various links between his album cover and the video. For example On his album Cover we can see that his face takes up most of the cover. In the first shot of the music video this same shot is imitated to resemble the album cover. Also the artist name graphic which features on the album cover also featured in the video.

 

Another example of links between music videos and ancillary text is Daft Punks most recent work. The main and most evident feature of there album cover is the image  of the pairs two helmets merged together. Because the background is black it really draws attention to the vibrant Gold, Silver and White colours. This iconic image used for there ancillary and TV adverts and heightens the build up for the release of the video for the single 'Get Lucky' ft Pharell. In the video we can also see links between products through the use of text. The text which appears on the album also appears at the beginning of the video.

As we can see artist usually include links, either subtle or major, to advertise, promote and increase sales. I believe that I group did well to create effective links between our ancillary text and music videos. A group decision was made to make our main colour scheme Black and white because we thought that the name love killer conveyed a down, depressed mood and it seemed only right to use black and white - Very neutral colours. Also, because of the title of the song, we decided we needed to create visual links which will emphasis the name. So we decided that we would have words like love on our artist jewelry seen in the video several times. This use of Gold Jewelry helped when designing my digipak because I knew what colours I can use. Also we used black roses as a prop. The connotations of a normal rose are things like love and care but because of the name we thought black roses would better suit. This link was clearly made to the ancillary.

EVALUATION QUESTION 1

Ancilarry: Advert Draft

DIGI PAK ROUGH COPY

ANCILLARY - Digipak

Based on previous research, I have decided that my main colours for my digipak will be Black, White and Gold. I have decided to do so because through various methods of research its evident that these colours are very prominent amongst female pop artist.

This is my draft of my album cover

Cinema screening, initial reaction and feedback

We had the opportunity to see the official screening of our music videos at the Screen on the Green venue in Islington; all the hard work on the big screen for everyone who embarked on this project to see! Below are videos showing the great initial reaction we got from the showing of the video and some feedback from a couple members of the audience. Feedback was great and we were glad to know that people enjoyed it. Hard work pays off!

Research - Ancillary

Upon further research on album covers, I discovered that many pop artist albums share similar characteristics i.e:

• The artist image is usually on the product
• A lot of the time the artist are seen from the waste up or in a close up
• Fonts used can be seen as feminine
• Not too many colours used (usually 2-4) 

This will help greatly when creating my final digipak. 

Introduction to Ancillary work

We where introduced to our ancillary task the other day which required we produce an album cover for our artist. In previous blogs we made it quite clear that our album covers main colour scheme will be black and white (with some hints of red/gold).

These decisions where made whilst researching female pop artist which same the genre of our artist. Blacks, whites, reds and golds are all colours which where common amongst female pop artist. Seeing how our artist is named Adara Black, we decided that black HAS to be featured in our ancillary work. We also figured that white would best compliment black. Furthermore, it seems only right that our ancillary works colour scheme remains black and white because in our video all of Adaras costumes are black and white.  

FINAL VIDEO

29. Aliyah, Djamel, Kevin, Taija from 283goswell on Vimeo.

Progress

I feel that this year I did not manage my time as well as I could have but nevertheless I feel that I have learnt a lot in this academic year. This time last year I was having trouble catching up with blogs and meeting deadlines, however this time around I believe that my group and my teachers have really helped to better myself and have more confidence in myself. I feel that my writing is more in depth and less vague and my use of technology has improved as apposed to just uploading screen shots and Photos.

Editing - Unfinished

From september up until now I feel that my editing skills have developed on a very major scale. I have been exposed to a wider range of facilities and functions in Final cut pro. I believe that making a music video may be the sole reason as to why my skills have developed. I argue this because in AS I had just started media studies and everything was new to me. Now in A2 I have a steady foundation in editing (a feature of media which I really enjoy) I  am able to expand and widen my knowledge of Final cut pro....

Editing - Following conventions/Order

I believe our video follows the normal conventions of a cliche pop music video. Our Video has cuts which occur on the strong beat of every bar, jump cuts, lighting etc. In terms of how our video follows our pitch, I'd say there are quite a few differences, mainly due to circumstances out of our control e.g Greenwich foot tunnel was initially meant to be for our bridge, but because of a lack of communications we had to change it to our opening which ended up working out in the end. This also meant we needed to replace our bridge location, so we changed it (ironically) to millennium bridge.

After we finished laying down all the base tracks and finished the cutting stage, it gave us time to edit, add different filters to the shots etc.

This shot shows one of the edits I added to a clip at the end of the bridge.
The shot was a result of me filming some scenery at Granary square and turning down
the opacity in final cut, then adding a filter on to the clip of our performer, giving it a broken tv effect.

The shot below was a result of my team mate Djamel filming scenery at millennium bridge at the end of our filming session.

Filming issues

Whilst filming, our group encountered many hardship. Due to everyones busy schedules (course work, Jobs ect) me and my group mate Taija had to film the rest of our clips on the monday before the deadline!!!! This meant that we worked hard and didn't goof around and got down to business. We first filmed in the photography studio in college but we where only given 30 minutes to film in there because of lessons and other reasons. However, given the short time which were allocated to film, we where able to obtain some good base base tracks.  After that we went straight to granary square to film our base tracks for the second verse. We had previously travelled to Granary Square to film but due to some maintenance issues, we where unable to film there. So this time when we got there we where able to capture some brilliant base tracks. At the end of our session at Granary we where told we could not film, but it did not affect us, we had done all the filming we needed to.

WE'RE FINISHED

Group 29 have successfully finished there video, which is a big relief. We where able to to finish our video hours before 3:30pm deadline which came comes in handy because it gives us time to relax, blog and reflect on our work.

Production: Filming day 3

The final day of filming :)  

This is almost the last of the stress! The final day of filming has finally come, after many set backs and delays the least I could say is that i'm happy to see this day. It was only Myself and Kevin at this filming session but despite this we got a lot done which means we can now fully focus on the editing. 

 

Taking a shot at editing

I took a go at editing some of the clips from the beginning and I believe that I was able to successfully lay down our opening location. I believe the clip was strong because it cut to the beat and had some effects which suited the genre I the song. 

Rough Copy DEADLINE

I believe our rough copy was rather strong but not as strong as it could of been due to our lack of clips. Before our rough copy deadline we only had two locations because of unforeseen circumstances. However, our edits and transitions I believe where really we'll executed.