Evaluation

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


  My media product uses conventions of a real media product, being a music video of a girl band.

  It includes many different types of shots, including close ups, extreme close ups, long shots and mid shots which help add to the conventions. These keep the pace up of the video and gives the feel of on going action and keeps the viewer entertained.

  Also, there are band performances included in the video which is something that appears in many videos so this is a convention that we made sure we had in ours. In a typical girl band video there is usually the appearance of a guy so Peter played a big part as part of the storyline as well as a convention. Lip syncing and editing was of course others that helped use the conventions of a real media product.

  We developed the conventions of a real media product by using different editing styles like split screen for instance. We used this three times throughout our video and I think this helped the video have more action and not seem static and boring. Another developing technique we used was the shots of the lips singing the words. We liked this idea as it broke up the video from being just the band to the focus on the words being sung. Also, our video was always changing locations and changing storyline so this helped the development.

  However, our media prodcut challenges the conventions of a real media product as we focused on lighting in our video and that can be seen as unusual, adding to the effect of the black and white theme which also challenges the conventions. It looks cinematic considering its genre as we got the idea from 'Vogue' by Madonna. Our video is also low budget which definitely challenges the conventions.

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

  My video and ancillary texts work well together as although the text being slightly different, they both reflect our band in the same way being that we are edgy but also feminine. 
  
  The music video is shot in black and white as well as my ancillary texts as I liked the idea of it looking professional and the focus being on the lighting. I wanted to keep everything in black and white so that the audience's attention would be kept as they can relate both products together. 


  Although I wanted our target audience to engage with the products, the use of different text fonts was so that they did not see the same thing repeatedly but something that caught their eye. 


  The combination of the two work well together because they both combine similarities such as the digipack has a still taken from the video and the attitude given off in the video reflects in my ancillary texts. 


3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?


  From the beginning of the project, the idea we came up with first, was the idea that we produced in the end and was exactly how I imagined it to be. This already was a great achievement for the group, but the feedback we got from the teachers in a 'viewing session' was even better,


"Beautiful, slick and professional video, with fantastic performances and tight editing. Lovely lighting and overall a pleasure to watch"  -Deputy Head and Media teacher.


  This was the image we wanted to portray and very glad that it was enjoyable. We learnt here that our performances were crucial as the message would not have come across how we wanted and the video would not look as professional. On our first filming session I found it hard to perform in front of the camera but after that I managed to boost my confidence. I am glad that I did otherwise it may have jeopardised the final video.


"Absolutely brilliant - could be on MTV! Characters were fantastic and you all gelled together. The clothes and attitude portrayed the image intended" -Head of Sixth Form.


  We were pleased with this comment as it was such a compliment as it seemed that all our hard work had finally payed off and the fact she said it could be on MTV was amazing because our video had clearly come across very professional.


  Even with the link to our video posted on facebook, because available to friends, family and teachers, all the comments were praising and hardly any critical. Although seemed like a positive at first, there was nowhere we seemed to be told to improve and this was seen as slightly negative as we hoped for constructive criticism. 


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


Construction and research-
  Technology such as the internet helped us with our construction and research and inspirations from other music videos came into play and watching the videos on the internet refreshed our memories. Also, taking into account the conventions of our genre would assure that our video included these too. We wanted our costumes to have a certain look which we was able to also use the internet for and found images of Beyonce and Rihanna which inspired us.

Planning-
  The technology that we used for this would be blogger, to blog all research, and also note any changes we made, or things that had gone wrong and we had learn't from. As well as this, our general progress in the project with feedback from teachers and peers on our music video and my ancillary texts. Imovie was used at the beginning of the project to create an anamatic. This helped us a lot when coming to shoot the video.

Evaluation-
  There wasn't much technology used during the evaluation apart from Facebook when Nancy uploaded the video and recieved feedback.

Poster

  Here is the poster to go alongside the music video and digipack. 


  I wanted it to compliment the digipack so the audience can relate our band with both media products. However, I also wanted it to be a bit different so that it would catch the eye of the audience which would intrigue them to listen to our music.


  We all agreed to having a picture of us on the front of the poster as the male audience may be attracted to us and the female audience relate to us as a young, independent band. Also, the audience will also be able to recognise us as 'Bullets and Barbies'. 


  I think the picture reflects our band as we are fighting over a barbie and this shows how we are not completely feminine but feisty, independent and edgy. In contrast, the pink writing does show our feminine side as we are women that appeal the a male audience also.
  

Change of plan!

After feedback on my other digipack I decided to change it. I was told that it would look better if it had a photo of the band as the front cover and there were too many film strips.. must of got carried away there! 


I now prefer this one as with the feedback I took on board, I do think this looks more professional and portrays the band better. 


I changed the text to a more hard and edgy font as the italic was looking to feminine and reflected them as too girly. However, I kept the pink as it still shows they appeal to the male and female audience and enjoy doing this. 


I wanted to keep the barbie doll photos as it changes the digipack from being just about them and accompanies the band name seeing as this is there first single/album.    

Digipack...

Finally finished my digipack! I am really pleased with it as I think it resembles our band really well..

I wanted to use images from our video as the film strips add the the effect of real footage. I like the feel this gives off as it looks proffessional.

I used the 'B' for the tray holder as it is like a mini logo to represent us and everytime the CD is placed or taken out it reminds the owner of us.

Digipack..

This is my digipack so far!! Getting there now.

I wanted my digipack to have a similar theme to the video so I carried on the black and white and I used pink writing to give it a girly feel that also runs alongside the 'barbie' part of our band name.

I didn't want it to be too girly so I focused on the lighting of the images just like our video and the black and white adds to the edginess and mysterious side of our band.

VIDEO!!

We finally have our finished video! However, this one is out of sync as when transferred to a different file it moved. The orginal one would not upload to here so we've had to show this one!

Screening

Our screening went really well today and got many compliments. The teachers and peers views on our video were exactly how we wanted it to be portrayed. 
Here are some of the comments we got...


Miss Beere (Head of Sixth Form)
"Absolutely brilliant. Could be on MTV! Characters were fantastic and you all gelled together. The clothes and attitude portrayed the image intended"


Mrs Moore (Deputy Head and media teacher)
"Beautiful, slick and professional video, with fantastic performances and tight editing. Lovely lighting and overall and pleasure to watch"


It is such a good feeling to know that our original ideas that we first came up with successfully worked and what I imagined would be our video, actually was.

Editing

Since being back we've just been editing the video and making sure everything is up to scratch. We had a few problems editing leading us to re-add clips and cut them again but wasn't anything that mattered too much. 


Today, Ellis dedicated herself the whole day to finish the video to allow us to screen in class to teachers and peers tomorrow.  It turned out really well and very thankful. 

12th January

Last day of filming

Finally last day of filming!

We successfully filmed the last clips we had planned to with some extra improvised clips too! I was so pleased with our filming today and we are so relieved to know all we have to do now is edit. 

The last clip came out so much better than we thought and added that extra YES to the end of our video. 

7th January

More filming


Today we managed to film the crowd scene!!


It didn't happen where we wanted it to exactly so at first we thought we could not do it, however after some discussion we used a different location which then worked in our favor in the end.  


Gratefully, two younger classes volunteered to be our 'fans' for this scene and definitely played them very well. If not performed as well as the did it would not have looked as professional. 


We also filmed some extra bits just incase we needed to add some more filming in. This came in handy as we wanted to make the pace faster in the video so we cut some more shots in that we filmed. 

15th December

Slight problem

Our final shoots we supposed to happen today but Ellis is ill so couldnt make it into school. Not only was disappointing for our final shooting but wanted to get it done before christmas holidays...

We then couldnt edit either as the MACs were down due to updating...

However, we started our digipacks and updated blogs.

13th December

More editing

We carried on editing our video today but found it really hard doing it without the parts that were missing. The reason for this, was that everytime we lip synced the music to the video it would move again when we added more clips.

We just couldnt wait for the filming to be finished so we could finally start bringing it together.

We also discovered we cannot split screen on iMovie so we have to rough edit and when we get 'final cut' we can finish it.

8th December

SNOW!!

Because of the whole week of snow we missed out on filming as we needed the school as our set.

However, we didnt let this get the better of us and filmed the remaining that we could. We still have two more parts to film but as we need a crowd of people we wanted to wait til the 15th December as we know people will be free that day. 

Once we filmed the parts we did, we started to edit what we had on iMovie and it was going really well.

29th November

Third shoot

Today we filmed the bits we had left out with Peter on the 22nd.

We shot him falling over down the corridor with the bags and the ring. We also managed to film the shots of the phone ringing and emails on the computer.

We only had an hour today so it was a productive lesson.

22nd November

Second shoot

So, for the second shoot straight away we had a slight problem as Ellis forgot the storyboard, BUT nothing could stop us today! We watched the animatic and decided on what shots we wanted to film.

Then, Peter realised he forgot his red tie so we couldn't film anything with Peter in, so at this point we were stuck for what to film but didnt want to waste a day. We came to the decision to film single shots of the band for the parts we needed.

17th November

First shoot

This time we did finally get some shooting done.

We got in our outfits and dressed up ready for the shoot and then we used the green screen to take some photos as we couldnt use the designated room in the morning. This was quite productive as we got a few shots done that we could use. These pictures could be used on our digipacks and posters if desired.

When the afternoon finally came we managed to shoot the band singing the whole song all the way through so when came to putting the perfomance into the video it would be easy for us to cut.

We did have a bit of a problem as I really couldn't get into the mood of performing as I felt a bit embarrassed, however seeing as we will only be using quick clips in the video it won't be visable.

Some of the process...

   Here you can see the banners we have made for our video. We wanted these colours to be bright but edgy, however then realised the video will be black and white anyway. 
  We are going to use these props because a music video of our genre doesn't necessarily have a live performance in their video, however this is what happens in real life and we wanted to put real life scenarios into our video. 
  Consequently, our video will have conventions of a rock video seeing as it has live performance/fans.

  This is the process when doing our animatic. Firstly, we had a problem with making each shot longer for the beats on the song but then figured it out by copying and pasting the shot. 
  Along the way, we discovered that some of our shots were too long and added repeated shots so it cuts more, so therefore we now have more shots in our video. 
  Our next problem was the song we uploaded was a remix and we could not cut parts of the song out so we had to reinstall another version. 
  Once this was done, we finally finished the anamatic. 

10th November

First attempt of shooting

Today we was going to try and shoot, however we couldnt get into the rooms we wanted to, so we did some test shots instead.

We liked this shot as you could see the spotlight behind which broke up the light and had a nice effect.

 This shot we liked even better as it was darker and had a nicer effect than the first one. This is what we went with in the end and decided to use a completely black background instead of the white one.

Rich Mix notes

Part One

1930's experimentation:
A colour box by Len Lye- Putting film to music, was an advert for the post office.

Go team- Similar to Colour Box, made up of found images, scratched and played around
                  with.

1940's: Soundies
Nat King Cole- Concept of perfoming and watching himself on screen, and shot of going up 
                           up the girls legs.

France called a jukebox and Scopitone.

1960's:
Beatles- Characteristics of lads, helicopter shots, handheld shots and overhead shots.

1970's: Queen

1981:
MTV- launched by accident.
Big breakthrough was Maddona. It brought a rise in female artists.

Michael Jackson-
First black artist on MTV- Billie Jean
His breakthrough was thriller.

50 Cent- Candy shop-
Humorous element underlies the sexual element.
A display of wealth and sex.
Mainly womens bodies on show, however his shirt is ripped off shows his tattoos and muscles.
Typical of its genre and was expensive.

Jay Z-99 problems-
Over 300 cuts
Contraversial with its violence
Camera moves all the time

Part two

Method of analysis:

• Genre characteristics
• Visuals relationships
• Sell artist as a star
• Intertexuality
• Voyeuism/looking

User generated content:
Mash up of Jay Z and The Beatles called the Grey Album. Remix of the videos.

Lego re-makes- Prisoners doing 'Thriller'.

Machinima- Lady Gaga.

Tips:

• Excercises with 'found footage'
• Learn to lip sync
• Karaoke multi angle version of a track for film
• Re-make an existing video frame
• Alot of cuts
• Needs to be visually memorable and worth repeat viewing
• Pitch the material
• Clear concept
• Be realistic
• Stroyboard
• Plan locations, props etc
• Shoot early
• Know the lyrics
• Blog video influence
• Research
• Blog photos
• Blog location shots
• Animatic
• Shots not too long
• Make sure you have all the equipment
• 10-15 times shooting
• Extra angles
• Lots of close ups
• Shoot more than you think you need
• Label everything you capture
• Be organised
• Sync up first
• Cut and cut again
• Aim for dynamic piece of work
• Blog rough cuts
• Screen grabs as evidence
• Lots of feedback
• Maybe artist feedback
• Evaluate

3rd November

Today we finally finished our storyboard and our animatic.

Our animatic took a while to do as we couldn't edit how we thought we could as seeing as there were many cuts in ours, it took a while to get the hang of working iMovie. As we got towards the end of the animatic we realised we uploaded the remix version of the song so then had to change that.

Apart from these minor problems we managed to finish.