EVALUATION
1. In what ways does your media use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?My music video, really supports the song. It does this by reflecting the deeper thoughts and truths in the video throughout. One of the strongest ways it does this is that it empahsises the character the song is portraying. It is not always obvious what the story is, that song is about. Its about a lost soul eventually finding himself. The first half of the video is filmed in black and white to symbolize his my characters bleak life.
I filmed close ups of my actors depressed face and filmed in abandoned and forgotten locations to really show the audience the misery in his life. locations like abandoned and burnt down houses to represent loss of love, locations high security fences to speak for his emotional barricade that he cant past. Society is always pushing him back. to support this, in the first half of the video the shots are mostly high angles or long shots. it is to represent his emotions. hes meant to be feeling small and vulnerable which also comes across in the songs lyrics. "nowhere to start cuz you cant face sacrifice". I wanted my actor to put his hands in his pockets to symbolize his lack of effort to change."if i start running the sun will catch with me". all these little things really help the song. this is why it matches music videos today as the song and video are merged into one whole experience rather than 2 completely different things which can disorientate audiences and put them off.
My digipack definitely challenges the conventions of a normal one.With subtle connotations
it gives off an "in your face" feel modestly. for example the front cover has a golden T on the front. this could be seen as a slight arrogance. but that is brought down because of the simplicity of the cover. this is what professional albums digipacks find difficult. with all their top of the range equipment they can too easily make an artist look too full of themselves whereas with limited equipment you can make him/her look good more subtly.
the back cover echo's the backstage rock and roll life style.with all the cliche objects in the background of a gig set list including fags,lighter,guitar picks and hair gel. this is to set a mood of what its meant to be like behind the scenes. a slight glamorization to make the audience envy the artist. this picture also shows how the artist slightly expects the fame. the fact that the piece of paper is creased and has coffee stains on it suggests that this artist is use to whole lifestyle already and can come into the charts with confidence.this is something that real album covers do well i feel i have matched similar standards.
the inside cover reveals more of the artists personality. it shows a rebellious side to him. rebellious but with style. hes in the bath in a suit. but hes in a suit. this shows that he cares about his image which a lot of artists portray in professional Album covers.
i feel that my album advert meets the criteria for a visually appealing and informative advert. it has all the information clearly layed out. there is recognizable synergy with the golden T on the wall giving audience a hint of what the cover will look like. the background and lighting is plain so i didn't have to change the color of the font too much. And the image is very effective and different. it portraits the stereotypical solo artist well. we can clearly see his face. However. i do feel that my advert doesn't stand out from the rest of them as i haven't used and fancy fonts or stand out colors .i still think that it comfortably blends in with other adverts.
2. how effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
My advert and digipack link very well. the golden T which is my album cover is also on the wall on my advert aswell as the inside cover. this gives the audience an idea of what the album cover will look like. it also has the artist both in a bath wearing a suit with a cigarette in his mouth on the inside cover and the advert. i have made the advert and the digipack a lot more similar as my video and ancillary texts don't actually have any connection at all apart from the artist being in the video aswell as the ancillary texts. However, i dont believe that a connection needs to be had with the ancillary texts and the video. the song is a different thing to the album. not everthing has to be connected otherwise it would just be repetitive and eventually boring.
even though i dont feel that they have a great connection with each other i feel they still combine to create the right effect on the my target audience. the photos for the digipack are quite alrtenative and have a sort of edge to them and i feel that the interesting cinematography in my video is enough to keep them gripped to my music video.
looking at previous adverts and digipacks really helped me in creating my own. by looking at professional adverts i recognized the simple ways in which they make theirs stand out which i could do and emphasized those techniques to make mine more effective. for example I make the release date for my album in big bold numbers contrasting with the white background. i also found that when looking at previous adverts they seem to keep them fairly simple and not being too flashy and complex. so i decided that one photo and the information would be enough and i feel it has worked. for my digipack on the other hand i needn't look at any other examples for inspiration. i had 3 set ideas in my head and i wanted to use them somehow. i believe that they work together.
3.what have you learnt from your audience feedback
asking my target audience what they thought was mostly positive. I had comments such as
"i like the way it tells a story. you can really see it comes from the heart" johnny chik
"the turning point of black and white to colour is really effective and really helps to build on the song" - joe courtney
"you have done a good variety of camera angles which makes bits of the video which could easily be boring, interesting to watch" - Theo ritter
from this positive feedback i gained a lot more confidence in what i had achieved and recognized areas that were successful. even though i got some very good feedback i also requested for them to critique it.here is some of the feedback that i received.
"there arnt enough shots of the artist" - angus
"some of the filming is a bit shaky in places and the camera goes out of focus a few times" - mark
"you could of added some more special effects in" mum
i believe that this is all good and relevant feedback. i totally agree that there isn't enough shots of the arist himself. but the footage i did get looked very similar and if i used it all it would have been too similar and would have began to get a bit monotonous. plus,if i used anymore artist footage i wouldn't of have time to fill in all the narrative i wanted to.
i do also admit that my filming was shaky. this was the first film i'd ever made and first filming i'd ever done so it took me a while to figure out the camera and the way it works. however it would be extremely time consuming for me to properly act upon it and re film it because it would be so much effort for such a little thing. on the other hand ive had feedback that my shakiness worked well and looked artistic.
on the last piece of advise i dont really agree with. yes there are limited amounts of special effects but i have used black and white for half the video and also a smooth dissolve transforming the video into colour. but i do think that my type of video isn't really asking for a great amount of special effects. it isnt a video that is meant to wow the audience with crazy visuals, its a video thats meant to inform the audience about this character and how he finds himself.
one the whole i was very greatful and intrigued with my feedback and found it very interesting to see what people had to say about it and it is now clear to me that i should have recognised during filming and editing what was missing and added more or less of it.
4. how did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
photos and digipack:
to edit my photos i decided to use an online website called "BeFunky.com". which is a very clear and simplistic way of achieving a successful look on your photo. i chose this website over photoshop as i thought is was a lot easier to understand that Photoshop and in the end i still achieved the same finish that i wanted.
as you can see on the side it is very clear and easy to follow. to create a good effect on my photos i mainly used the exposure and colour mixer tool.i didnt really come across many problems while editing my photos. one minor problem that i came across was the fact i couldn't get onto the "befunky" website at school which forced me to have to do it at home
for my digipack i used the "be funky" online photo editor again to edit my photos and microsoft power point to add things such as text and borders. i do understand that if it a lot more difficult to make something look professional on powerpoint but i used it to save time as i understand the program and i so don't have as much confidence use more technical and complex programs like photoshop. One problem that i had was that when i adjusted my picture size so that it was the right measurements to fit in a CD case was that when i selected the measurements the picture didn't fit on the page perfectly. luckly it did for the front cover but for the back and inside there were gap. to over come this i found a pattern off the internet that i thought would go with the image on the inside cover. i then adjusted it to the right size to fit into the right gaps. i did this for both inside and back cover.
music video
i had never used any editing software before. not even windows movie maker so i thought that i was going to find the editing process to be extremely challenging. howver i found that the program i was using " Adobe premiere Elements" was also very simple to use. At the beginning i was editing with the suggested "quick" difficulty which they offer for people who hadn't done any editing before. i began to use this and quickly learn the basic functions like how to cut a clip, how to move a clip, how to put a certain lighting on a clip e.g black and white. when i felt i had got the hang of these skills i eventually moved up to the "expert" difficulty where everything is more or less the same but you can edit your video in much more detail. with guidance i was able to achieve further professionalism by adding extra effects in such as the transformation of black and white to color.
