Poster:
The CD case:
And finally, our music video:
Friday, 9 December 2011
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 |
 |
| 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.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)