Final Products

Here are our final products in all their glory:

Poster:

The CD case:

And finally, our music video:

Q.4 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation sheet?

Q.4 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation sheet?

During the research planning for our music video we used the internet for sites such as YouTube. I used youtube.com in order to gain a better understanding of the metal genre as it's not the usual genre that I listen to. What I used YouTube for was to look up and view music videos from different bands of the same genre as our song (rock/metal) and this helped me to understand what motifs/themes, cinematography and mise en scene should be in our music video. I looked at the music videos of bands such as Black Veil Brides and Black Stone Cherry in order to make our music video the best it could be.

Advantage: Easy to find videos about metal/rock music/bands.
Disadvantage: Lots of 'fan videos' which are just lyrics on screen or pictures of the band instead of actual music videos.

During research, I used google.com. Google is a search engine which allows you to look up anything and everything you need to. I used Google to look up our chosen band As Gods. I've also used Google to find images for things I've wanted to visualise in my blog entries.


Advantage: Easy to find information on chosen subject.
Disadvantage: Sometimes difficult to find specific bits of information and sometimes hard to copy and save images.

In order to be able view YouTube to research the metal/rock genre, I used an Apple Mac. Apple Macs are extremely good for being creative but for me, the downside was that I'm used to  Windows Pc so it was quite difficult to adjust and to understand how to do certain things. Overall these macs were a good use though so hopefully I can understand how to use them properly!

Advantage: Good for creative purposes e.g. editing and producing our music video.
Disadvantage: Used to a PC so everything twice as long!

Throughout our music video process we've used digital technology to create it. In order to actually make our music video we used a Sony digitial video camera to record our footage. This camera actually records onto an SD card but we didn't have one of them so it recorded onto its hard drive and we had to use a USB cable to link it through to the computer in able to get the footage off so we could edit it.

Advantage: Digital so easy to view footage on camera and no risk of filming over footage.
Disadvantage: USB connection to computer wouldn't work for a while so difficult to get footage onto the computer.

In order to edit our footage, we needed to use an editing programme. The one we used was iMovie which is an Apple programme. iMovie enabled us to move footage where we wanted it to be, it allowed us to cut footage and we even found out that you could change the brightness and contrast of our footage! Without iMovie we wouldn't have been able to do our music video so we're very grateful to it!

Advantage: Brilliant techniques; the way you can do certain things with your video e.g. effects.
Disadvantage: Not that easy to use if using for the first time; not self explanatory.

For our Poster, we used a programme called InDesign which is an Adobe software. In InDesign we created the poster by making it a box and then placing our chosen photograph into that box. We then put writing over the top to actually make it look like a real magazine advertisement. My only criticism of InDesign is that it's not very easy to use unless you know what you're doing because the common tools (text, make a text box) aren't labelled so they're quite hard to find. However, we did all learn new skills whilst using InDesign so it's not all bad.

Advantage: Using InDesign was really professional to use for our CD cover and magazine advert. Was used instead of Photoshop so looked more realistic.
Disadvantage: None of us had used InDesign before so it was difficult to get a lot of the things we wanted done.

Some of our photos were quite dark so we needed to make them lighter and brighter. In order to do this we used Adobe Photoshop. In Photoshop we made our photos brighter so more detail could be seen. We also cropped our photos in Photoshop as the photos were too big too big to be a CD so we cropped them down until they were 13 by 13cm. Photoshop was a great help to us because our advert and CD case both have the photos that we wanted because we resized them. If we hadn't have been able to resized them in Photoshop, we would have had to take more photographs so Photoshop saved us a lot of time!

Advantage: We were able to edit our photographs efficiently because both me and Nick had used Photoshop before.
Disadvantage: Tilly didn't really know how to use Photoshop and although she gave lots of input, I think she felt left out and we didn't all function properly as a group.

In order to record all of this, we've had to use blogger.com. Blogger is an online blogging system which allows people to voice their thoughts or write their coursework just like I am. Blogger is relatively easy to use but sometimes the formatting and spacing between images goes off key and it's hard to put them back into place. Other than that though I've had no trouble with Blogger and have overall enjoyed using these things in order to create my my media products.

Advantage: We were able to document and upload our coursework onto Blogger to create this blog you're reading now!
Disadvantage: The layout of writing posts was different in the finished post than it looked whilst writing it. Frustrating to organise the layout.

Q.3 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We've finished our music video, finally! Here's the link to it:

Since we've finished our video, we've asked people for feedback. In class we asked some people outright and we've also put it on the social networking site Facebook. We thought this would be a good way to get feedback as a lot of people have and use Facebook and also, it gives the chance for a wider audience of different ages and media experience (if they'd done any media subjects in the past or for GCSE or A level or at Uni). We asked them to leave feedback and here are some screen shots of what they said:

The positive points we got from this are:

• The shot of Dom stamping
• How the church was at both the beginning and end as it 'brought the video full cirlce and it's ambiguity was effective'

Some negative points we got were:

• The lead singer and
• How much band footage we had

Of course to us our video seemed fine but reading these comments made us open our eyes.

Reading:

When you've viewed something for a long period of time and have made it, you're going to read it in a specific way. For example, the preferred reading of our music video is that the driver kills someone by a hit and run sort of accident and is guilty and his conscience is following him who is actually himself. It's important to get feedback in order to know what the public thought will be of a media product and in case there's something that needs to be changed if it doesn't sit well. Feedback is important as it's constructive criticism and can help to improve.

Print Work:

We've also got some feedback for our print work. We asked an audience of variety to give us both positive and negative feedback for it.

 A lot of things were said about the style of both our poster and CD case. For example somebody said about our poster that 'it's simplistic which is good because it's easier to take everything in as it's eye catching'. We created a Wordle to show the feedback:

This is just the kind of style we were going for; minimalistic and simplistic as it's not too crowded or busy so there's not to much going on which makes it not as difficult to get the information out.

Here's a Wordle creation that consists of adjectives used to describe our print work:

Feedback is extremely important as audiences are essentially the people who will make your product a success or not so it's important to listen to them and their views otherwise they may go against it and your target audience or profit won't be reached.

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

In our music video we obviously have a majorly repetitive image and motif which is the eery white mask. As this was such a massive thing to the video we decided it would be best if we used it in our print work as it would have a strong link to it. The front cover of our CD is a normal photograph of the mask taken from a slanted side angle and our poster is also of the mask. Our poster's image is of the mask from a high angle so you can see all of it. We used two different angles and photographs because we didn't want both the CD three fold case and poster to be the same because that's boring, unimaginative and lazy so we were quite against that idea and by using the mask motif on all three of our products it links them strongly together.

It's important to make sure that all our products link together and are cohesive because essentially it's a marketing technique. For example if an individual sees a magazine poster advertising an album, if the poster and album are cohesive then they will be able to find it and purchase it. If they want to buy it but have forgotten the name of the album/CD, then the picture on the CD will help them recognise and remember the picture on the poster. For example the Gorillaz have cohesive albums and posters like their album Plastic Beach. Here are examples of the CD album cover and a poster advertising it:

Another album that they've also done this with is thier album Demon days. Both the poster and album cover have the same image on: 





Although the Gorillaz aren't a metal/rock band, they are part of the rock genre and we took inspiration from their album cover/poster idea of having the same or similar image for both.



Another thing we did to make sure that our main product and ancillary texts were cohesive was that we used the same font on all three of them. We did this because some bands have a certain font associated with them or use the same font; even if it's just their logo. For example the Red Hot Chili Peppers have their own font for the title of their albums and also their logo too. Here's some examples:

Logo 1

The font is all the same on the album covers and logos. This is where we got the inspiration from to make the font the same as it's a direct tie in to all the products.



Album



Logo 2



We asked an audience if they thought our print work was cohesive and one person said: 'The poster's picture relates to the CD case and you can obviously tell that it belongs with your music video'. This is such a relief to hear because we've tried to make our main product and ancillary texts cohesive and we thought they were but it's such good feedback to understand that what we think is also what our audience thinks too.

Another thing we used to make our media products cohesive was was the colours of black and white. Both the advert and CD case have white writing (in the same font). This relates to our video too because the mask is white so we felt that the white writing would be easy to see and would be a reminder to the viewer of the mask. We feel that this is cohesive as all three media products have a lot of the colour white in.

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

The genre of our music video is rock/metal and usually with these kind of genres, there is usually quite dark and Gothic narratives (stereotypically). Using the song Faith for our music video, we've made it so that the narrative is linked through the pace of the music, the beat of the music and the general feeling of the whole song and of course the lyrics.






When I first listened to this song and we were trying to come up with ideas, I felt that it would be quite dark and mysterious and that it would be a bit uneasy as some of the lyrics touch on mental health; in my opinion. For example one line is 'Who are these voices ringing in my head?'. I think that this is suggesting that the main person in the song has or has had either something like multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia which is why we used the masked conscience as it's there to reinforce the character's guilt and shame about the accident as it won't leave him alone and follows him around. This links to the film Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999). Fight Club consists of a person who has a created a person himself as a result of his depression. this links directly to our video as the conscience is created directly through the character's guilt and grief at what they've done. Fight Club's non linear narrative also inspired us too. This is because the beginning of Fight Club is actually the end; or the begining of the end! We wanted to use this technique as our video is based on similar themes to Fight Club. The factor of bringing the story full circle is highly ambiguous as it's difficult to understand whether the sequence is the actual beginning or the actual end. This is also why we put the beginning sequence in reverse so it was esier for the audience to understand which part it was.

Screen shot

In our music video we have used both narrative and band footage which is quite a common convention especially in the rock/metal genre as it's heavily instrument based. If we had done a pop video then we might not necessarily have had band footage because that's genreally not a convention of the pop genre. We wanted to stick to the conventions of the rock/metal genre as we wanted to make it as professional as we could. We edited the band footage to be in black and white as we thought that it would look more interesting and be more immersing for the audience to watch. The rest of the footage is in colour because we didn't want to lose any attention away it so we left it as bright as possible.

We have used an inspiration from the film V For Vendetta (James McTeigue, 2005). The inspiration we used from this film was the idea of the mask and at one point we did actually talk about using this particular mask. We used it for both the CD cover and advert too. For example the V For Vendetta film poster is centrally based around a creepy mask. We used this idea in our poster as we wanted it to stand out. This mask makes it memorable and we wanted the audience to be able to remember it and aybe even be a bit creeped out by it as it would definitely stay in their minds then.


We realise that our main influences for the narrative are from filmic products; we wanted to make a post modern music video so we wanted to use filmic and cinematic products such as these films for inspiration in story line and filming techniques.




For inspiration for our music video, CD cover and magazine advert, we also used other videos from our chosen genre. An example of this is a CD cover from the band Saviour Machine. This is the cover of one of their albums: 

We feel this relates strongly to our CD cover but we also got the inspiration for our magazine advert from this too. 

We used a lot of conventions from metal/rock videos. For example, the biggest one we could use was having a performance and narrative based music video. We split up the time of the video into our story of the conscience and footage of As Gods playing a live set at local a venue in Bristol.

Print Work...

This is a collaboration of all my posts about progress of our print work.

Print work begins! We've decided to make a three fold CD case as we think it would be more interesting. We've made a three box template in InDesign in two lines with tabs to stick down with glue in order to seal it. A band from our genre that uses this kind of CD case is a band called In Flames and the album that they've used it on is Come Clarity. Their case is a three fold too and this is where we took some of the inspiration from.

For our front cover we've got two ideas. Because the song that we're using is called Faith, the band is called As Gods and our opening scenes were in a church, we thought a cross might be a good idea as the front cover.

Whilst looking on the internet one day I came across this DVD cover:

Although it's a DVD cover and not a CD cover, we still liked how the skull was made out of people. We thought maybe we could do the same with a cross. Deciding on the design of the cross wasn't that simple as we all had different ideas and images in our mind. I wanted a traditional cross made out of seven or eight people but they would be the outline and maybe have a glow behind it like in The Descent poster. Nick wanted a cross with tails on the end made out of four people and Tilly wanted two people to make the cross traditionally. So as you can see there was a lot of ideas and maybe a heated discussion about what we thought was best.

There is a band that use a cross made out of people for their CD front cover. The band is called Motley Crue and the album is Saints of Los Angeles. This is the kind of cross that Nick wanted and although it's a good idea and a nice design, I still think that a cross like The Descent poster would be better.

Motley Crue are a band from the rock/metal genre that we're studying and that our band is from so it's lucky that our work links to them!

Here are some cross ideas that we drew in order to help bring our creations to life!

Our cross designs

Our CD three fold case has six panels and we've come up with a plan of what should be where and how it should look. For our front cover we've got either an image of the mask or the human cross. We want to have an image of the band somewhere in the case and we are thinking of having a striking image of something to do with the actual video itself like a location or a character as a panel. We would also like to have a panel for lyrics and of course we want to put the band's logo in. To make a three fold, you obviously have to fold it up but that means that some images have to be upside down and not in the place you immediately think they should be. That's why we drew out a plan in order to keep ourselves sane whilst trying to figure it out and also because it's visual, it's easier for our brains to take it in!

First screen shot of case

We've almost finished our CD three fold. We've decided not to go with the cross idea as the front cover as it's time consuming and also because it doesn't tie in strongly enough with our video as it's not seen anywhere else. We're all disappointed but we might use it as a second image; for example the first inside image you see when the case is opened.

We've put in a screen shot of the band as one of the images because we wanted a photo of them all and this image ties in with the video because it's directly from it, and also because the lead singer has his arms upwards like he's gesturing towards the heavens. We feel that this image strongly links to the song name, the band name and our setting of the church. We've put in the lyrics to the song as well because that's a convention that I quite like to see and also, you enjoy a song more when you know the lyrics and can sing along in my opinion. This photo is in colour although the band footage is in black and white. We've done this because we thought that for a photo for the CD cover, it would be better in colour as it's more eye catching. We also did this because the CD case has three black and white colour scheme panels already so we didn't want to overload our audience and buyers with too much black and white.

We've chosen an image that we photographed of the church we filmed in and we've edited it in Photoshop.

The photo before the edit:                                                And after:

                                               










To get this effect we went to image on the drop down menu, chose adjustments, went onto HDR toning and turned the detail up. I really like how this photo has turned out as it's grainy and everything is more in tune and all the detail is easier to see.

The mask photo we decided to use was just a simple image of the mask on a background of green grass as we felt that this contrast interestingly. We did a few edits to see what it would look like and just to have a play around with ideas in Photoshop. Here are our edits we did:

Our finished CD cover!

In the picture before, the band's logo was the inside middle panel and the photo of the church with the track names was the back cover but we've decided to swap them. We decided this because we had put the band's website, their Facebook page, twitter link and Myspace site on the inside panel and we thought it looked more professional if the black panel with the logo and websites was the back cover. We then put the church panel with the track names where the black panel was. They were both directly above or below each other so it wasn't difficult to move! As we were swapping them both over, this meant that the track names would be on the inside. We knew this was unusual and that we were breaking a convention but we decided to do it anyway because our CD case isn't your typical one. For example, it's a three fold case which isn't so usual although it's becoming more popular, so we decided to do it and it's also eco friendly as well as it's using less plastic.

The band has three logo designs on their Myspace website (www.myspace.com/asgods) and we decided to use two of them in our CD cover. We used one as a whole base for one panel and the other was just the top half of a panel which we put dedications and copyright and record label information.  The record label we decided to put our band on is RoadRunner Records. RoadRunner is a label which is for the heavy metal/rock genre. Some artists on the label include Nickleback, Slipknot, Black Stone Cherry, Kiss, Lynryd Skynryd, Lenny Kravitz, Slash and Korn so there's quite a range of musicians on this label.

One Big Massive Editing Post

I thought it would be easier if I wrote one post on editing but would come back to it each time we did something new as it's easier to read in one bit instead of going through my other posts to look for it.

(1) We've filmed our introduction and put into iMovie which is the program we're using! So far, we've got the introduction and a little bit after that which is the character and the conscience walking out of our setting of the churchyard. We edited it all together and it comes to a total of 1:36 which is more than we expected!

However, when we showed it to our teacher, she pointed out to us that some of our shots were too long and it didn't cut to the beat. She said 'It looks like you've made a film and just put music over the top'. This was such good feedback for us because we then realised what we should actually be doing and we were able to change it as we hadn't filmed much. So now, I'm going to make sure everything is cut to the beat and we're going to be so meticulous about it!


(2) We've finished filming most of the narrative but can't edit it until we've filmed our band footage but that's not for another two weeks! Here's a Facebook print screen of the event that was created for it:

Print screen

The gig is in half term so we'll need to 'hire' out two cameras and a tripod from our teacher and we're borrowing an HD camera from a friend and I also have a tripod so we'll have three angles to film from which will have a variety of shots! We've decided to have two cameras on a tripod; one on each side of the stage and one person holding a camera moving in and out of the crowd getting different shots of the band from long distance, medium long distance, medium close up distance and close up distance.


(3) We've filmed the band so technically everything is filmed now but there's been an issue with two of the cameras. Whilst filming, we think that maybe we were too close to the speakers and they switched themselves off. However they would turn back on so everything was fine! But not a lot of footage got filmed because of this so we decided to film more than our chosen song as we would have extra footage just in case we needed it.

Although we decided to change the song from Frozen to Faith because of time issues, we still weren't 100% sure of the change so we decided we would film the band playing Frozen just in case we changed it back again. Unfortunately they didn't play Frozen so looks like our mind is made up about which song to use!


(4) We're having some trouble getting the footage off the cameras and into iMovie. When we connect the camera via USB cable, the computer recognises the camera but iMovie doesn't for some reason which is odd. However we're getting some IT help so hopefully we should be able to start the rest of the editing!


(5) Finally after encoding, formatting and other technical things we've managed to get our band footage onto the the Apple Mac we've been using and into iMovie! This is great because it means we can finally sort out where to put band footage and how to split up the narrative and performance. So far we have put all our narrative footage into order in iMovie so now we need to decide where our and footage goes.


(6) We've started to put the band footage in and we didn't realise how time consuming it would be. For example lip syncing. It's time consuming because when putting in the footage, we need to sync the lyrics to the lead singer singing them. This sounds simple but actually it's not. It took us a while to get each clip to match with the sound but after a while we adjusted to it and started to make better judgements about where to cut it!


(7) At the end of our footage we decided to put the opening sequence in reverse at the end. We've done this to symbolise the fact that it's a full circle. For example after he's killed the masked man, the character unmasks him and realises it's him. Therefore he's essentially killed himself as it's his conscience so we thought this would tie in the whole back to the beginning/circular symbolisation.

Before

(8) We borrowed two cameras from college and another from a friend. Because all three were from different places, the quality was different. This meant that the two college cameras were lower quality than our friend's camera because it was HD. This proved a problem because all three cameras picked up the light differently at the gig and so some footage is really light and some is really dark. Unfortunately because the gig wasn't a controlled environment we couldn't make the lighting to our choice so we had to like it or lump it. But the thing we kept telling ourselves was that we weren't professional directors with a multimillion pound budget for our music video, we're students whose budget was £16! (The mask was £1 and entry to the gig was £5 each). So we felt better about this!

After

Because of the difference in light, we played around with the contrast and brightness levels in the footage. However, the footage began to be incredibly grainy and pixelated so we thought about putting it into black and white. We did this and although both cameras' footage isn't exactly the same quality or residue, we think it's made it looks better than before so we're leaving it in black and white!