lolz

very good. enjoyed the change of clothes.

Good intro. Adressed questions. Well clarified. Loud enough. Nice hat.

feedback from 44

Thats all folks!


Then your whole work repeats again. O_O Sort it. :P


Anyways it's pretty original, your work was really entertaining to watch and your auteur work really shined well. Your different style plays with Indie really well, we admired your work and hope the best with this. (:

Feedback on commentary from group 45

This commentary is very effective, its fun and interesting. The pace of the video flows well and enables it to be easy to listen to and absorb what they are saying. The comical idea of changing their clothes and props throughout the video keeps it fun and lighthearted. They have included plenty of extra footage and still images once again enhancing the easy-watching theme. The added footage and stills provide great examples and keeps the video easy to follow.
Well done :) x

Commentary Feedback.

Good idea to cut away to show what you are talking about when talking about your digipack & planning, Cutting away to images you took for your Ancillary task, cutting on final cut, using your blog, etc.
There is some continuity with your video as you kept changing in your music video and in this commentary, at first was distracting with wierd hats etc.

Karl Final Evaluation

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

In many ways we’ve tried to make out music video effective by using common conventions seen in existing media products. Firstly, for example our music video is of the alternative rock genre because of this our video is mainly performance orientated which is key feature of alternative rock videos therefore making our video conventional. Furthermore, a secondary part of our video is the clips we’ve tried to include of everyday life. We have filmed in a music studio, out in town and on a stage. These locations try to promote the idea of fame and music promotion but also the shots in town promote the idea of our band being quite accessible. This links to Goodwin’s points of trying to sell the artist. The idea of following the band around in their everyday life can also be seen in ‘blink 182’s video ‘rock show’. The band can be seen walking around town together and this is what we have tried to capture in our video. This therefore means our video conforms to conventions. However on some levels are product does challenge the convention. There is no clear narrative, unlike some other videos of this genre which does make it slightly unconventional however, considering this it would have been very hard for us to break conventions. In the alternative rock genre most videos are quite experimental because of this, whatever we did in our video it would have been considered experimental and therefore conformed to conventions. In the terms of Goodwin’s points I feel our product does conform. We feel our video does convey our personalities well which refers to Auteur theory. This is a demand of the record label and does promote our band image.

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

Overall we feel our ancillary texts and main product are quite effective together. We have tried to include on both our pieces information that will promote our DVD. Tour dates can also be seen on our magazine advert. To keep continuity between our pieces we have used the same backdrop, font and logos in our magazine advert as well as the DVD. We have picked these colour schemes because they are quite simple and they do not divert attention away from our main pictures which help to sell our artist. This links our pieces and makes them effective, they attract the audience into them by locking the viewer’s attention and because they look the same the audience is drawn in. Another way we’ve made our digi-packs effective is by showing a clear identity of our band. We’ve used lots of close ups in our video and tried to twin that with close up photos in our advert and DVD cover. Not only does this help with continuity but the images/close ups of the band help sell the artist. This is one of Goodwin’s points and ensures our products are effective. We have also tried to reflect the idea of auteur theory in our pieces. We have tried throughout to make our video and digi-pack as funny/playful as possible and we’ve to link this in the pieces therefore making them obviously belong to the same band and continuing our continuity. Unfortunately, there were obviously some negatives about our ancillary tasks. We feel as a group we did not leave the appropriate time for us to build our pieces. We had one lesson to try to make our products and our un-familiarity with Photoshop hindered us further. We feel if we could have had one of two more lessons we could have formed a much greater product. We could have included more relevant information and promoted our DVD further.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From our first pitch for this video we have had many feedback comments. These comments helped us realise some good ideas for our video. They made us aware of what are target audience really wanted because they were the people giving us feedback. The main feedback we received from our pitch was generally how are we going to film the shots in town. This feedback made us consider our locations further and eventually decide how we were going to film our ideas. From our peer feedback on our rough cut piece we learnt that we needed to include more close ups in our video. This feedback was relevant because it was from our peers and are target audience. Bearing our feedback in mind we went back to our location for a second time and filmed some more close ups. These close ups were used to help build our band identity and were added into our final cut. Overall from the feedback we have learnt its important to leave enough time for a second day of filming as it became apparent to us, you do not always get all of the necessary footage in one shoot with regards to out digi-pack footage we feel we should have left more time for it as the overall products look very rushed. We failed to include everything we wanted such as drawing more attention to our DVD in our magazine advert. Therefore in retrospect to our feedback we have now learnt to schedule our work and leave more time for our bigger tasks. However overall, the most of our feedback was very pleasing. We had many good comments which were all positive.

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

Throughout the making and development of our product we have used lots of new technology. For example to host and keep track of our work we have been using a website, www.blogger.com. This website allows you to have your own blogs where you can record how your work is progressing in posts. It is very useful in keeping track of what you have done in lessons. You can host videos and pictures which enabled us to show all of inspiration in a simple, easy to access location. A second piece of technology we used to build our media product was a programme called Final Cut Express. This software is used when editing video footage. Final Cut is a very easy to use piece of kit and we all easily came to terms with the controls. You can add lots of different effects and with the marker tool available it was very easy for us synchronise our music to the visuals. Lastly, we used software called Photoshop. Photoshop is software which enables you to place a picture on another picture and add text onto it; with this we made our Digi-pack. We found this programme overall very hard to use. The tools were not easily explained and we found ourselves struggling to produce our products. Looking back at our pre-luminary tasks I feel we have come a long way especially with the use of final cut. Generally, over the two years of studying media studies I feel I have come a long way in filming and in producing products. I now feel very confident behind and in front or a camera and also I feel capable of using Final Cut editing software to make a good product. As we carry on our media course I hope to learn more about Photoshop as this is the one piece of software I feel most unfamiliar about.

Karl Lambourne

Scott Final Evaluation

Qu1. In What way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?‘Conventions’ is the term used to describe each different factor of a video/media production; similar to stereotypes they lead you towards what type/genre of media production you are watching. For example Alternative rock music videos consist of the following conventions – performance, comedy and a slight narrative. The song we chose (Pacific Ocean Blue by A) fitted with the alternative rock genre so we as a group were able to produce our product around the generic conventions. In our video we tried to use develop and challenge each of the conventions, we used a lot of performance shots which included us playing as a band in different locations (‘the Lock Up – Chesterton’ and ‘Sawston Village College Hall’) and in the same locations us playing our specified instruments singly in close up shots. We developed the comedy convention by massively implementing it, we did this by simply adding more comic shots such as ‘the box shot’ and us dancing with the public. During editing we tried to create the video with as much lip sync as possible while having as many comic shots as possible, this proved quite hard as every point where there was no singing and we wanted to add one of these shots we would find it difficult as we were trying to fit to on of Goodwin’s points ‘Relationship between lyrics and visual’. Our original plan to challenge the narrative convention was also disrupted by this point as we couldn’t leave out the narrative as we would then of missed out the point, to get around this we minimised the relationship between lyrics and visuals which became a very slight narrative. We know that the comic side of our music video worked from the feedback we received on our rough cut and we feel that we fitted our music video to the genre and conventions of alternative rock. Our video meets record label demand by meeting the main characteristics of the alternative rock genre and clearly identifies these points which promote the artists to the audience whom listen to this genre of music. The image the media product creates for the band is one that shows they like to have fun however take their music career seriously, for example throughout the whole video there are shots of us dancing with members of the public and having a fun time, while the rest of the shots show the serious side of the bands performance aspects.Qu2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?Overall we feel that our ancillary tasks and our main product worked quite effectively together. We tried to keep continuity between the two tasks, which I feel we did strongly, however our DVD cover and Magazine advert were very poor in terms of conventions, as we know we have failed to get them to the standard of the Main product. After we handed in our main product we spent too long evaluating it and writing on the Blog and before we knew it the deadline for the ancillary task was two lessons away, we spent one of these lessons taking photos for the task, we didn’t choose stills from our music video as we thought we had none appropriate, so we went to the junction and got permission to take some photos backstage/outside of the venue and we then used these in our Digipak, this still had continuity with our main product as it still had a performance element to it. And the second lesson editing the photos on Photoshop, which concluded on us being very rushed for time. As none of us knew how to use Photoshop effectively this led to us becoming frustrated and effectively ruined our task. As we rushed to finish both the DVD cover and Magazine advert we ended up getting the information wrong and our magazine advert did not advertise our DVD, which it was supposed to of, We could have changed this by planning to spend more time on the task from the start of the project, we could also have included a more detailed description of the band with more dates about tours, more record labels and possibly more ratings. Our three products would all attract our target audience in different ways, our music video would be played on music channels/on the internet and would attract an audience practically via them listening and watching. While our Magazine covers would grab the attention of the readers and get them to find our band name/the visuals of our band familiar when they see our DVD in the shops. The three tasks work together to promote the band via showing the performance and comic side to us. showing that we like to have fun as well as taking our music seriously conforming to the alternative rock genre.
Qu3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?Our Audience feedback was very helpful and because of the feedback (from our teacher, class/group and some other members of our year whom are also taking media) we received on our rough cut, which we posted on our Blog we were able to perfect our final piece. For example, the feed back we received on our rough cut told us that our sense of comedy was noted which was good news to us as we were worried that it would only be us who found the shots funny due to the fact that we all knew each other, and that we needed to include more close ups as we literally didn’t have any which meant there was little lip syncing and the band was not very well advertised this was the only criticism. To combat this we went back to one of our performance area’s ‘The Lock Up’ and filmed close ups of each band member playing their instruments/Singing under many different filters of light and at many angles, which we then added into our final production using final cut. Feed back on the development of our final production after we had received the feedback on the rough cut then told us that we had improved our video drastically that the lip syncing was much improved and that overall we were now selling the band much more than previous. The feedback on our final product was very strong apart from on the ancillary tasks but we knew we had messed up on that part of the project, are feedback was not very strong for our ancillary task and there were many ways we could have improved it, for starters spending more time on it and adjusting the appearance to make it more eye catching. And should we be asked to produce a similar task again I would make sure for the first lesson the whole group write a plan of all the deadlines and what needs to be done in what order and the whole group stick to it as I feel this is where we failed to compete.Qu4. How did you use new media technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluating stages?During the planning and evaluating stages of this production we used many new media technologies, including Blogger.com which was a massive contribution to this stage of the music video, as we were able to plan it in college and at home by posting all of our brain storms, ideas, final plans and generally all contributions to the video in terms of planning, we found this very useful as it meant we were able to continue working on our product with easy access to all of our class work and it also meant we wouldn’t have to remember any ideas you had for the product should you think of them while your at home (e.g. while your watching a music channel on TV) you could just type them down onto the Blog. As part of our assignment it was asked that we try and get permission by someone relevant to the band, to produce a music video to the song (it didn’t matter if we didn’t receive a reply but we had to show that we had tried), we found an email on twitter.com which led us to the band manager ‘Jason Perry’ whom to our surprise replied to our e-mail and gave us permission to create a music video to the song. We used more, different media technology through the construction and research stages of the assignment; during research we again used blogger.com to note down our finds and post our work/ rough cuts etc which led us to be able to receive feedback and gave us a bigger foothold to create and evaluate the productions, google.com to research Digipaks for our ancillary tasks which proved very helpful for finding the conventions of alternative rock Digipaks (Similar to video conventions – more of a narrative photo of whole band after/during performance) and youtube.com which we used to sample videos of alternative rock production, as our song currently has no music video (that we could find) we based our video on videos by such alternative rock bands such as ‘Blink 182’ and ‘Sum 41’. These bands led us to finding the perfect conventions to make stand out in our production via looking at their more successful songs, which led us to a more performance and comic convention rather than a narrative. We also used the programmes ‘Final Cut’ and ‘Photoshop’ to create our whole Assignment, final cut was the programme we used to create the video, our skills have improved over the time we have been studying media and we were able to use the effectively to create a strong video including lip syncing, filters and small effects such as fades in/out. Photoshop was used only for the Digipak, which unfortunately none of our group knew how to use despite all of us been doing media for at least fifteen months. We used Photoshop for its layering of images and its many effects, sadly we only had one lesson to finalise our Digipak and due to our lack of knowledge around the programme we were unable to produce a strong piece, and out of the whole project I feel we let ourselves down on the ancillary task. To combat this problem next time I suggest that we either commit to spending more time on the programmes we do not know much about. Or we could take the time out (e.g. after lesson) to learn our way around the problems we do not know how to fix with the programmes. Our preliminary task was also very helpful in the technology side of this production, it helped us to remember the skills we has picked up In the previous year of media and allowed us to begin developing them for our main assignment, this was very helpful in all areas especially editing in final cut, as we were able to apply what we knew and then experiment with fades in/out etc in practice for our final product. Overall I feel we created a really strong media product and an effective assignment.

Final Evaluation

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

Our media product was of the alternate rock genre, and we took forms of other similar products, for example we were heavily influence by Blink 182 and Sum 41. We took characteristics from select videos, and portrayed them in our own. From studying 'Goodwin's Theory of Analysis', we were able to relate genre characteristics from other videos and adapt them into ours. A typical form we used from rock videos was: performance, and we used this for half of our product. And the other half was: lifestyle, we put this in for extra entertainment value to the audience, as the footage is quite comical. Our locations were conventional, as we used some band rehearsal rooms and a stage at Sawston Village College. By using these locations and then the town centre we were able to easily fit our footage around our genre specifics. I don't think we really challenged our genre, although the clip of us all climbing from the same box could be considered as uncharacteristic. We added this though for pure entertainment value as we wanted to reflect our personalities in the video, and we felt that alternative rock allowed us to do this. Otherwise we stuck to guidelines from our area, like the use of band mise en scene like instruments, and stage settings. The close ups of the artist, and complete artist focus, makes the band easily remembered. Through the comedy element of our video, we promoted the band with the comedic and relaxed atmosphere. By not having a crazed feel to the footage and transitions, we could draw the audience in to just enjoy the comedy without having to think too much. I would consider myself to be a member of our video’s target audience, and I think it’s attractive to watch because of its entertainment value. It vaguely represents shows like jackass, as it’s a fun and laid back viewing to give the audience a feel good viewing. We developed two sides of the video throughout, the performance and lifestyle sides, adding different clips from each side as the video progressed. There isn't an area where too many clips from the same side are stacked next to each other; we felt this would have the potential to bore the audience. The two real media products we based our video on were 'Rock Show' and 'In Too Deep'.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

I personally felt we could have done a lot better on our ancillary tasks, but if nothing else we did get the element of continuity between them, and between them both and our video. We used pictures from a shoot we did at The Junction to promote the band members, like we had done throughout the video. We chose this location as it’s a popular venue in Cambridge, which directly relates to our genre and promotes it; a lot of upcoming and popular bands play there. We kept to a basic background on both the DVD cover and magazine cover to vocalise the band, this way you'd easily be able to identify our ancillary tasks with the video. We also used the flaming A which is the bands signature, if the audience knew the band this would have appealed to them in particular. The products do however work together to promote one another, again through the same colour choices and continuity of the A and band photos. The advert doesn’t promote the DVD as strongly as it could have done, as we included tour dates also, which takes the sting out of the advert. But it does have reference for when the DVD is available, and the DVD then promotes the band by use of pictures that will be recognisable to the audience. We decided to go for a simple colour scheme quite simply because we didn’t have the right skills to get what we wanted into photo shop. I think we would have gone for a more elaborate, stand out background if we had the choice to show the extrovert sense to the band. The tasks do promote the same feel as the video also, that being relaxed and band focussed by being photographs of the band in their everyday lifestyle. The magazine article promotes the record label by visually aiding it on the décor. These adverts would appeal to a new audience as they promote the band and album in a way that would make the audience recognise the genre through the design and to listen to their music.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Primarily we had to pitch for our song to the rest of the group, and our feedback from the pitch was pretty positive. They thought that the research we had done towards our locations and mise en scene would help in the future filming we would have to do. Although they did also say we would have to develop a stronger plot for our video, as our main ideas were a little bit scatty. Our feedback was mainly from members of the group, and Holly (media teacher). Although not all of them were relevant for our target audience, to study media we have had to learn to fit ourselves into any audience to be able to evaluate products more efficiently. We have all done a video preliminary so their knowledge was valuable to us. From our rough-cut feedback we gained a lot of welcomed knowledge. People thought we’d hit the nail on the head when shooting for our genre, and the amount of research we had done on location and props really helped the outcome of our video. But from the first lot of feedback we had also been given areas to improve on, and this was mainly to prioritise band members with close ups, and to only use long shots when they were really needed. To add to that we needed more lip syncing footage our vocals, we took all of these things into consideration when we went for our second footage shoot. The feedback we got was really helpful in order for us to make progress and produce our final piece. From our ancillary task we got feedback we expected, the other groups correctly analysed the problems with our pack that we knew were there but had no time to change. It was overall disappointing that we didn’t have time to change the things highlighted to us. If we were to do our main video again, we might get more valuable shots from the stage performance sides, as we looked a little unprepared and we were lucky to get the mise en scene there that was necessary.

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

The main resources for the planning and research elements were the blog the media groups used and ‘You tube.’ These sites were of particular importance as they gave us a source for finding previous music video’s done at the college, and real existing ones. The blog was the entity of the project though, as this is where we published all of our planning, research, and anything else that came to mind in the lead up to our final product. Being able to see and talk about other videos whilst not in the classroom really helped us adapt our own ideas. With these sites as well, I was able to upload a video of me teaching the guitar parts to our group, so we could re-enact them better in our video. This proved helpful, as Scott isn’t able to actually play guitar. Another program that was essential for us to make any advance on our project was ‘Final Cut.’ This is a program that allowed us to merge, cut and add effects to the footage we had caught on our shoots. Our abilities using the program had been progressing as we continually used it in media, and this helped when chopping up long clips we had captured, most of which we didn’t use. A specific thing that has developed for me from AS is the use of markers in effect so you can get exactly what you want from it. The program we used for our ancillary task is called: ‘Photoshop’ this program was ill favoured throughout the group, as our ability to use this it wasn’t high. But from the experience I think we gained experience on how to use if we are ever called to again. Although it wasn’t our favourite piece of new media technology, it was essential to amalgamate our DVD and magazine add effectively. Last year, we did a preliminary task where we a short music video. This really prepared us for the main task, as it showed us just how much footage we needed to create our product. I think we advanced from the preliminary task as we used much more lip-syncing, and we related our music to visuals more effectively.

Commentary

Scott - Evaluation

Qu1. In What way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

‘Conventions’ is the term used to describe each different factor of a video/media production; similar to stereotypes they lead you towards what type/genre of media production you are watching. For example Alternative rock music videos consist of the following conventions – performance, comedy and a slight narrative. The song we chose (Pacific Ocean Blue by A) fitted with the alternative rock genre so we as a group were able to produce our product around the generic conventions. In our video we tried to use develop and challenge each of the conventions, we used a lot of performance shots which included us playing as a band in different locations (‘the Lock Up – Chesterton’ and ‘Sawston Village College Hall’) and in the same locations us playing our specified instruments singly in close up shots. We developed the comedy convention by massively implementing it, we did this by simply adding more comic shots such as ‘the box shot’ and us dancing with the public. During editing we tried to create the video with as much lip sync as possible while having as many comic shots as possible, this proved quite hard as every point where there was no singing and we wanted to add one of these shots we would find it difficult as we were trying to fit to on of Goodwin’s points ‘Relationship between lyrics and visual’. Our original plan to challenge the narrative convention was also disrupted by this point as we couldn’t leave out the narrative as we would then of missed out the point, to get around this we minimised the relationship between lyrics and visuals which became a very slight narrative. We know that the comic side of our music video worked from the feedback we received on our rough cut and we feel that we fitted our music video to the genre and conventions of alternative rock.

Qu2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

Overall we feel that our ancillary tasks and our main product worked quite effectively together. We tried to keep continuity between the two tasks, which I feel we did strongly, however our DVD cover and Magazine advert were very poor in terms of conventions, as we know we have failed to get them to the standard of the Main product. After we handed in our main product we spent too long evaluating it and writing on the Blog and before we knew it the deadline for the ancillary task was two lessons away, we spent one of these lessons taking photos for the task and the second lesson editing the photos on Photoshop, which concluded on us being very rushed for time. As none of us knew how to use Photoshop effectively this led to us becoming frustrated and effectively ruined our task. As we rushed to finish both the DVD cover and Magazine advert we ended up getting the information wrong and our magazine advert did not advertise our DVD, which it was supposed to of, We could have changed this by planning to spend more time on the task from the start of the project.

Qu3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our Audience feedback was very helpful and because of the feedback we received on our rough cut, which we posted on our Blog we were able to perfect our final piece. For example, the feed back we received on our rough cut told us that our sense of comedy was noted which was good news to us as we were worried that it would only be us who found the shots funny due to the fact that we all knew each other, and that we needed to include more close ups as we literally didn’t have any which meant there was little lip syncing and the band was not very well advertised. To combat this we went back to one of our performance area’s ‘The Lock Up’ and filmed close ups of each band member playing their instruments/Singing under many different filters of light and at many angles, which we then added into our final production using final cut. Feed back on the development of our final production after we had received the feedback on the rough cut then told us that we had improved our video drastically that the lip syncing was much improved and that overall we were now selling the band much more than previous. The feedback on our final product was very strong (apart from on the ancillary tasks but we knew we had messed up on that part of the project) and should we be asked to produce a similar task again I would make sure for the first lesson the whole group write a plan of all the deadlines and what needs to be done in what order and the whole group stick to it as I feel this is where we failed to compete.

Qu4. How did you use new media technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluating stages?

During the planning and evaluating stages of this production we used many new media technologies, including Blogger.com which was a massive contribution to this stage of the music video, as we were able to plan it in college and at home by posting all of our brain storms, ideas, final plans and generally all contributions to the video in terms of planning, we found this very useful as it meant we were able to continue working on our product with easy access to all of our class work and it also meant we wouldn’t have to remember any ideas you had for the product should you think of them while your at home (e.g. while your watching a music channel on TV) you could just type them down onto the Blog. As part of our assignment it was asked that we try and get permission by someone relevant to the band, to produce a music video to the song (it didn’t matter if we didn’t receive a reply but we had to show that we had tried), we found an email on twitter.com which led us to the band manager ‘Jason Perry’ whom to our surprise replied to our e-mail and gave us permission to create a music video to the song. We used more, different media technology through the construction and research stages of the assignment; during research we again used blogger.com to note down our finds and post our work/ rough cuts etc which led us to be able to receive feedback and gave us a bigger foothold to create and evaluate the productions, google.com to research Digipaks for our ancillary tasks which proved very helpful for finding the conventions of alternative rock Digipaks (Similar to video conventions – more of a narrative photo of whole band after/during performance) and youtube.com which we used to sample videos of alternative rock production, as our song currently has no music video (that we could find) we based our video on videos by such alternative rock bands such as ‘Blink 182’ and ‘Sum 41’. These bands led us to finding the perfect conventions to make stand out in our production via looking at their more successful songs, which led us to a more performance and comic convention rather than a narrative. We also used the programmes ‘Final Cut’ and ‘Photoshop’ to create our whole Assignment, final cut was the programme we used to create the video, our skills have improved over the time we have been studying media and we were able to use the effectively to create a strong video including lip syncing, filters and small effects such as fades in/out. Photoshop was used only for the Digipak, which unfortunately none of our group knew how to use despite all of us been doing media for at least fifteen months. We used Photoshop for its layering of images and its many effects, sadly we only had one lesson to finalise our Digipak and due to our lack of knowledge around the programme we were unable to produce a strong piece, and out of the whole project I feel we let ourselves down on the ancillary task. To combat this problem next time I suggest that we either commit to spending more time on the programmes we do not know much about. Or we could take the time out (e.g. after lesson) to learn our way around the problems we do not know how to fix with the programmes. However overall I feel we created a really strong media product and an effective assignment.

Evaluation

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

Our media product was of the alternate rock genre, and we took forms of other similar products, for example we were heavily influence by Blink 182 and Sum 41. We took characteristics from select videos, and portrait them into our own. From studying 'Goodwin's Theory of Analysis', we were able to relate genre characteristics from other video's and adapt them into ours. A typical form we used from rock videos was: performance, and we used this for half of our product. And the other half was: lifestyle, we put this in for extra entertainment value to the audience, as the footage is quite comical. I don't think we really challenged our genre, although the clip of us all climbing from the same box could be considered as uncharacteristic. We added this though for pure entertainment value as we wanted to reflect our personalities in the video, and we felt that alternative rock allowed us to do this. Otherwise we stuck to guidelines from our area. We developed two sides of the video throughout, the performance and lifestyle sides, adding different clips from each side as the video progressed. There isn't an area where too many clips from the same side are stacked next to each other, we felt this would have the potential to bore the audience. The two real media products we based our video on were 'Rock Show' and 'In Too Deep'

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

I personally felt we could have done a lot better on our ancillary tasks, but if nothing else we did get the element of continuity between them, and between them both and our video. We used pictures from a shoot we did at The Junction to promote the band members, like we had done throughout the video. We chose this location as its a popular venue in Cambridge, which directly relates to our genre and promotes it; a lot of upcoming and popular bands play there. We kept to a basic background on both the DVD cover and magazine cover to vocalise the band, this way you'd easily be able to identify our ancillary tasks with the video. We also used the flaming A which is the bands signature, If the audience knew the band this would have appealed to them in particular.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From our rough cut feedback we gained a lot of welcomed knowledge. People thought we’d hit the nail on the head when shooting for our genre, and the amount of research we had done on location and props really helped the outcome of our video. But from the first lot of feedback we had also been given areas to improve on, and this was mainly to prioritise band members with close ups, and to only use long shots when they were really needed. To add to that we needed more lip syncing footage our vocals, we took all of these things into consideration when we went for our second footage shoot. The feedback we got was really helpful in order for us to make progress and produce our final piece. From our ancillary task we got feedback we expected, the other groups correctly analysed the problems with our pack that we knew were there but had no time to change. It was overall disappointing that we didn’t have time to change the things highlighted to us.

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

The main resources for the planning and research elements were the blog the media groups used and ‘You tube.’ These sites were of particular importance as they gave us a source for finding previous music video’s done at the college, and real existing ones. The blog was the entity of the project though, as this is where we published all of our planning, research, and anything else that came to mind in the lead up to our final product. Being able to see and talk about other videos whilst not in the classroom really helped us adapt our own ideas. Another program that was essential for us to make any advance on our project was ‘Final Cut.’ This is a program that allowed us to merge, cut and add effects to the footage we had caught on our shoots. Our abilities using the program had been progressing as we continually used it in media, and this helped when chopping up long clips we had captured, most of which we didn’t use. With these sites as well, I was able to upload a video of me teaching the guitar parts to our group, so we could re-enact them better in our video. This proved helpful as Scott isn’t able to actually play guitar. The program we used for our ancillary task is called: ‘Photoshop’ this program was ill favoured throughout the group, as our ability to use this it wasn’t so. But from the experience I think we gained experience on how to use if we are ever called to again. Although it wasn’t our favourite piece of new media technology, it was essential to amalgamate our DVD and magazine add effectively.

Video Commentary Problems.

One of the main problems we encountered while producing a plan of action for our commentary task was choosing a location.

Evaluation 'POA'

Today it is up to us to create a plan of action for the production of our music video's commentary. We have this lesson to plan it, next lesson to film it and then two more lessons to edit the piece. Below is our plan of action.
We plan to have the four of us introduced individually, we plan to do this by having a short clip of each of us talking (a sentence or two about the music video) with our name on screen, then the clip will to all the four of us together in a room and we will answer the questions for the evaluation in a casual group discussion similar to a group interview.

Q 1: In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- Talk about 'Blink 182s' influence from their video 'Rock Show'
- Audience for alternative rock videos
- performance and lifestyle element of video
- we stuck to genre conventions
- how choices we made led to our final media product
- Goodwins theory and points that we used

Q 2: How effective is the combination of our ancillary task and our main product?
- how mise-en-scene was key to getting the photos relative
- our opinions on the DVD and Magazine covers
- representation and selling of artists

Q 3: What have you leant from audience feedback?
- open for discussion, talk about our camera work (Lack of close ups) etc.
- ability to communicate
- how we overcame these problems

Q 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research planning and in the evaluation stages?
- how we have developed skills on final cut, photoshop and blog use
- how we uploaded examples of our genre from existing products via 'youtube' etc
- camerawork

Feedback from 44

Information required is done.

Artist is promoted well.

Continuity through poster and DVD is good.

Spelling of blue is incorrect on the back of the DVD.

The band name is hard to work out on your digi back.

Digipack feedback

DVD Cover;

The use of the picture on the front helps to identify the artists and thus sells them. nice flaming A. The use of the colour grey and similar themes are kept throughout the digipack features eg. font keeping it easy to recognize.

Magazine advert;

The tour dates are very clever as they are selling the artist and are original but as its a magazine cover, it doesnt really work.

Digipack Feedback from Group 45

Both the DVD cover and magazine advert have continuity with your music video. We like how you have included different pictures on the digipack. We think that the magazine advert is not as strong as it could be as we feel that it might have been better if the image was the main focus. However we like that you have included tour dates which no other group has done. The DVD cover has worked better than the magazine advert. We like the small picture included on the back and the font used for the titles. The placement of the logo's are a little bit random but if you had more time this would have been something you could have thought about a bit more. Overall a good job, well done :)

feedback

Has Info, but is slightly confusing with different pictures of stuff, also there isn't any websites or when it goes on sale, also its a tour poster not a 'DVD on sale' and does not include any numbers/websites on where to buy tickets from. Promote artist really well as there are clear picture of the band on each product. All have continuity with artist being shown, record label on each, colour in the background, but doesn't have a obvious link to the video.

Digi-Pack turn out

I think the roundabout feeling within the group is a little disappointed. The outcome of our digi-packs really aren't what they had the potential to be, due to lack of time we had left ourselves to hit the deadline. None of us really were that successful in trying to overcome photo shop either which helped slow us down a considerable ammount whilst frantically trying to put our advert and cover together. All in all the final hurdle was a bit of a let down and if we had planned our time better we would have seen some better results.

Magazine Advert

Album Cover

Digipack Preparation

The deadline for our Digipack is Friday 27th November 2009, giving us 4 days to finish all our final products. We've decided our shooting will take place on Wednesday 21st November. We have two strong ideas for our digipack, fortunately they're both at the same location so the shooting can be faster and beneficial. Our first idea is to stand the band against the advertisement board outside the junction. The wall highlights all the major upcoming music events in Cambridge, this would be more than appropriate to our music video because the theme of publicity and commercial success is present. The band are trying to be sold by showing their lifestyle in the music video and now it shows their devotion to the industry and friendly relationships through one part of the digipack.

After capturing test pictures in class today we found that for this particular shot, a camera with a fish eye lens would be better. It can capture more of the advertisement board without changing the frame of the artists and shows that the band are the centre of attention in this album cover. The band stand out better and immediately grab the attention of a viewer. The picture below shows the difference a fish eye lens can have.

This shoot will take place between 10:30 and 12:20 on Wednesday 25th November.

We feel this shot would work better as the DVD Album Cover part of our ancillary task.

Furthermore, our second idea was described in the blog 'Digipack Development', it would work better as the magazine advert part of our ancillary and would show the band walking. The final image will try and give a celebrity effect and a paparazzi feel and will try and boost the celebrity status and reputation of the band. In todays lesson we took test images to try and decide on the correct positioning of the camera and artists. These are our results:

This first picture was positioned around five meters away from the band as they gradually walked towards the camera.

We felt it gives the right impression and does show the paparazzi feeling we're after.

We also felt the band didn't incorporate enough of the image.Next we tried the same layout but the image was taken when the band (excluding the drummer) were closer to the camera and the overall distance between the lens and the artists was smaller.

We felt this achieved the aim of capturing celebrity status and this time the band fill the frame better.

We also felt the were too close to the camera, and that had this been a paparazzi camera the artists would try and keep their distance.

These last two images fill the brief a lot better. The distance has been kept but the artists still fill the frame. By giving a slight zoom the angle of view has been altered and give the pictures shown above. This setup has been noted and will be used on the day of our shooting. The camera we'll use won't be a fish eye. We're waiting to hear back from the manager of the location for final permission to shoot this shot so the location has not been finalized as a posed to the DVD album cover. Finally, we need to bring an extra person to the location so we can capture the pictures while all the band members are in shot.

Filming prep (late post)

This is a photo of the lighting from when we filmed at the lockup. We stood each band member against a wall and then filmed them playing the whole song and extracted parts to put in the main video. You can see from the positioning we were aiming to get close up and med shots of each member.

Digipack Example

This album cover for The Kooks could be used as a template for our digipack. The genre is the alternative rock/indie rock which is the same as our music video, therefore we could use this album cover as a stimulus for our DVD pack.

In our digipack we're aiming for commercial success and maximum recognition for the band members. The digipack also needs to be a brief summary of our music video so they viewer can have a 'sneak peek' of the product. This alone will also sell the artists because much of our video incorporates an insight into the lifestyle of the artists.

After group discussions we have several possibilities for an album cover. These include a group logo/the junction idea/a screen grab from the music video. However, theres more to an album cover than the front image. This could be a barcode from the shop, a track list, the logo of the record label. Theres so much variety to chose from when selecting ideas for our album cover, such as font/positioning of title/ratings/the front image itself etc. These are some ideas for possible fonts.

DVD Cover Ideas

For our Digi pack we need to include a DVD cover and a magazine advertisement, above is the Album cover for busted. We chose this band because we feel they conform to the traditional rock formality, although we are aware that our msic video is alternative rock and Busted are more pop rock we still feel their Digi pack is appropriate to use as guidelines for ours.

To grab the viewers attention we need to:
- Include bright and catching colours
- Include good reviews from well known Critics i.e MTV etc.

To advertise the product we need to include:
- A Brand name
- A Release date
- Where it canbe purchased
- And official website such as a myspace or facebook page
- A Label with a good reputation

Extra Features that could be included would be:
- Promotional videos
- Bonus tracks
- Live Footage
- Tour Info
- Ratings
- Behind the scenes Photos and footage.

Dvd Cover, Magazine Advert By Karl

For our project it is a requirement for us to include DVD cover and a Magazine advert. For us to get an idea we need to look at existing examples to get a good idea.

This is the Album cover of the album 'Alexisonfire' by the band Alexisonfire. This album cover is for a slightly heavier genre of music than our piece. It does meet expected genre characteristics because it doesn't give much away and leaves the audience guessing about the content of the CD, Only existing fans will know. This however does look intriguing to new fans as they will want to find out more about it. There is a clear band name in easily readale format on the front which does premote the artist.



Across is the poster advertising the Vans warped tour 2009. This could be an example of what we're going to use but to promote our Dvd instead of a tour. This advert is good because it uses lots of bright colours. It gives the neccasary information and highlights the important parts.

Digi pack example

This example of Bloc Party's album: Weekend in the city shows us some ideas that we could use on our own digi-pack. Although the genre of music is different we could at least take from the layout of the album cover and side.
Our ideas are more band focused than this though and it should achieve public promotion through the band picture on the front, not only will the audience enjoy the music but they will also know each member and who they are listening too. Of course another possible idea would be to put out a logo that would be recognizable among fans like Lostprophets do on their cover of "Liberation Transmission"These ideas we could fit onto a DVD cover as well, but you'd expect to see more things such like tour dates and ratings from separate publications written on the back, and on the inside covers. here's an example of a DVD cover that will vaguely relate to ours.
The title on this DVD cover gives us more examples of what we could do with ours, maybe create a font that is band specific. After looking for the band A's pictures we can see the pattern of text that we can try and imitate on our own digi-pack.Even though the Flaming A is not really to our taste imitating would be our best idea to make the digi-pack look professional. And in fact as you can see, this front cover is pretty much what we are going for with ours apart from we don't want to have the effect they do. We want the images to be naturalistic so the members are easily seen. But we have a lot of ideas to contend with when creating our digi-pack, and we also have some photos to take.
Another thing we have to think about is special features here's an example of special features from another DVD

We could have things like:
-Band Commentary
-The shooting of the video
-Lyric sing along
-Pre-Production
These are all things we can consider when producing the back of our DVD.

A photo like this is what we'd be going for for our digi pack. We wont be using this one as we want to have a proper photo shoot with a better camera, but something that catches all the band, without instruments, behaving how they would in everyday life, but we might experiment with posing pictures also.

Feedback from group 37

The rock genre fitted well with the video and suited it very well.

We thought the in screen shot of the drummer was very good and created a good effect. It also had a very similar angle of famous rock videos currently.

The live atmosphere made it suit the rock genre even more.

The transitions and cuttings were very effective and flowed well.

The lip syncing was well done and synced.

The overall feel and effect of the video was very professional and we thought attractive to a select audience.

Feedback on Final Cut

Feedback from Group 44

> We're guessing it was a rock genre and it worked very well. You had performance shots with a bass and a guitar with drums and of course vocalist. The shots you used worked well.

> You have done a lot more work on your lyrics and visuals and it has paid off. Close ups of JJ singing the lyrics works well.

> Music and visuals such as the cuttings are very well done.

> The demands of the record label are met. This is through the use of close ups of the artist and performance shots.

> The notion of looking gave an impression of looking into their lives.

> Intertextual reference to some ideas like the box idea.

Feedback from Group 45

> We really like this video because it kept us entertained and we wanted to watch to see what happened next. A lot of the shots were really funny, we especially liked the one of all of the band coming out of the box because the editing is so good that it makes the viewer believe that you are all coming out of the same box.

> The video fits in really well with the genre characteristics. The genre of the song is rock and we see a lot of stage performance along with narrative. The narrative is effective because it shows the band all having fun and messing around.

> There is not much link between the lyrics and visuals however there is a strong relationship between the music and visuals

> Overall the video is very effective and we can see a lot of hard work has gone into producing it.

Feedback from Group 47

> Genre conventions: Follows the characteristics of rock music video as it has a stage performance and is like a documentary of them on the road

> Also had dance routines which is in lots of existing music videos.

> Lyrics & Visuals: No obvious relation to what the lyrics were saying to what they were doing on screen.

> Lip Syncing was good and consistent throughout.

> Music & Visuals: Band use instruments that are relevant to the genre & song (Drums, Guitar & Bass guitar).

> Demands of the record label: Lots of close ups of the artist & Band. Majority of video had band in.

> Voyeurism: Not a lot of voyeurism as it was noticeable that they were all aware of the camera, even the extras being filmed.

> Intertextual reference: No real reference to other music videos, films or TV programs.

The Loveable Rascals present 'Pacific Ocean Blue'

Digipack Development

Now that our music video has been completed and submitted, we have until Thursday 26th November 2009 to create our digipack. This consists of the album cover for the music video and the magazine advertisement. To have an effective digipack there needs to be a running theme through them both, this gives a signature to the artists and viewers can relate the magazine advert to the album cover or vice versa.

Our initial ideas for the album cover included ideas around positioning of the band and possible finishing effects. However, there wasn't much thought about location or themes. After a small discussion in class and some previous research we decided to request permission to capture our shots at 'The Junction' in Cambridge. This would be suitable because its an entertainments facility that includes several performance spaces and often holds large music events. The rear exit of the venue is a stereotypical backstage space, there's often a large touring bus and large stage doors as well as a metal fence surrounding the area. This is appropriate because our band would be familiar with these areas as they're a touring alternative rock band and using this location will show this to the viewers. There is a picture of this below.
Using the junction as our location would highlight the celebrity status of our band and could be used as a theme for our magazine advert. We brain stormed ideas that included having people posing as paparazzi and the band wearing sun glasses to suggest the reputation and fame of the band.

A brilliant place to start was to look through women's lifestyle magazines to find a picture that was similar to our idea. These were the pictures we found:

This picture is from LOOK magazine and shows a long shot of two celebrities. This is the kind of shot we were looking for as it shows the whole body and is taken from afar.

Next is a snapshot from MORE and shows two celebrities, this time from a closer angle. We can compare and contrast the images so far and decide on the angle most suitable for our digipack.

Finally we have a picture from a HEAT magazine. This also follows the conventions from the pictures above and is exactly the type of picture we're aiming for.

We can see already that the lighting will be naturalistic and the frame will include all of the artists and all of their body. Further testing at the location will decide camera positioning and blocking for the artists and other actors. Overall we will give out professional reputation and an underlying theme of fame and publicity could run through our digipack. These are only our beginning ideas and further research and decisions still need to be made such as possible finishing techniques. A brief idea we had was to put a camera filter over the picture giving it the impression its been taken from a camera and shows the naturalism in the shot, whereas without this filter it could suggest an insight into the band leaving the venue. This could be like the filter used in Lady Gaga's Paparazzi music video.

Penultimate Editing lesson

Today is our second to last editing lesson. So far we're looking good to be completed on time for our deadline. Our main tasks today have been to complete the lip and instrumenting syncing. After this was completed we've just been generally ordering our clips and moving all the clips onto one layer to make them easily viewable. With all the clips on one layer it is easy for us to select just the clips we wanted. Our goal for this lesson is to have all of the clips in the correct places and order and then for our last lesson to add all the filters and effects.

After Hours Editing

Today our whole group came into college after hours to try and catch up with our editing. We started by sorting all of our good usable footage from our poor footage, once we had done this we started to lip sync our video. By placing markers on the actual song we were able to clearly see where each of the chorus' start and the distinctive lyrics. then we did the same with the video (still attached to audio) and simply lined them. We have sped up the footage of all four band members climbing out of a box to hide the jumps were each person climbs in (camera has been paused while recording for this). Tomorrow we hope to perfect this for our final deadline on monday. When we will hopefully begin our digipacks [Albums and DVD cover].

Filming at the "Secret Location"

We went to take some test footage on site to gain some ideas of what we could do extra on hen we next filmed at "The Lock Up" and we stumbled upon a secret location. Here we managed to get some photo idea's for our digi pack, and we also took some footage that we may include in our music video of us all climbing from a box. The footage will only be a few seconds long but it adds an extra bit to the band lifestyle section of the video.
we made it look as if we were all climbing out of the same medium sized box by choosing when to stop and roll the camera, and by using this technique we were able to make it look as if we had all started in the same area.

Final Cut Progress

This is what our video looks like in the editing process right now. We have a lot of out of place footage and a lot of unused sound, although when we convert it to quick time this wont cause any problem. We need to sought out all the footage that we're using add effects and lap over only when we need to.

Feedback from Target Audience

In revising our pitch on the target audience, we could chose an appropriate viewer to judge and comment on our progress so far. In our pitch we specified that our market would be to "Teens and 20+". Therefore, we picked to suitable viewers and asked for some input and feedback on our rough cut video.

Our first was Gareth Hyde.

Profile of Target Audience

These give us a better understanding of what needs to accomplished in our final days of filming and editing. Once we've collected all our footage we will show our work to an expert for professional feedback.

Test Footage 2 (scott wrote this)

After evaluating our existing footage and our feedback from our teacher and other groups, we felt it necessary to obtain more band shots and close ups. Consequently we ventured around long road and found a secluded location and set to filming.
We feel these shots may be used to fill some of our gaps and will help to build our band image and could be evolved in our digi pack. Our footage includes us walking down a set of stairs (leaving the stage) at several different angles which evolves continuity. And a continuous shot of all four band members climbing out of a box as if we were all in there together.

Location Angle Shot Settings

We had to decide on the angles of shots at the location. To take full advantage of the lighting system we had at our discretion at Sawston Village College, we took ideas from previous music videos that used a stage performance or concert (as shown in the Moodboard post) and produced a professional looking shot. From the drawing of the location below it shows the eclipse we made between the colour scrolling light, the artist and the camera.

To give the right effect, the light (pictured above) had to be kept at

a dimmer setting so that camera could detect the artist.
This gives a silloette impression of the artists and shows the performance side of the music video. The area covered by the colour scrolling light is shown in the drawing. The picture below is cut from our rough cut and it shows the effect given.

Contradictions

From our feedback from Holly, and other groups we have had contradictory views on our locations and shots. Some say we have to many locations, and other think the contrary. Also some think that we have a wide variety of shots, but upon looking closer i think most would agree that most of our shots are long and medium. So to overcome this we have decided to edit some of the street footage in final cut, to zoom in on the faces of band members, or just edit them so they appear as close ups on the final version. We also are going back to the lockup to get more closeups of each band member to add to the video.
With these things put into action we hope the overall result will look a little more professional, and contain more variety.

Location Settings

The following drawing shows the space we were provided with at Sawston Village College, it shows both the stage and the auditorium in the hall. The four artists have been marked with a single black dot and the camera symbols represent the direction and position of the camera when we captured our footage. The shaddowed sections reveal the area the camera can see. Most of the shots drawn on this plan map the shot movements, we decided on these before arriving at the location because we knew these would be the trickiest to capture. Camera movements are mapped by two crosses joined with a straight line, there also some rough measurements between objects and the camera. The blocking was simple when it came to artists positioning on the stage. The famous conventional layout of an alternative rock concert is prominant in every stage music performance due to the musical requirements on a stage, this means keeping the drumkit upstage so that the vibrations can resonate with the space above the stage and doesn't drown out the sounds of the other instruments. An example of this layout is used in the final performance of 'The School of Rock' as pictured below.



The lead singer is at the front, leading the piece and the two guitarist are kept slightly upstage, either side of the singer.

Firstly, we can see the camera movements we aim to create of the lead singer.

The lead singer is positioned in the centre of the drawing above (croppped from the overal layour drawing). The two main shots we aim to create are the circular movement around the rear of the singer, which will expose the lights directed at him and the linar movement. The movement is just over 180degrees giving a chance to show the artists face whilest singing. On the day of the filming, the camera was positioned roughly 1.5metres from the artist. In order to settle with this distance we had to use time in class to judge several distances to see which was best.

The movement required two cameramen, one controlled the direction of the camera by moving the pivot so that the singer was kept in shot at all times, the other dictated the movement of the dolly; making sure the distance from the artist was constant. Overall, it gave a smooth effect and a moment of the shot is pictured below.This moment of the shot is taken from when the camera was in the position marked in the drawing. The drawing also shows several other stages of the shot to give an impression of how the face of the camera movement throughout the shot so that JJ was kept in frame.

Next, we captured the other shot shown in the drawing. It is the linear movement the moves across the front of the artist and captured the other artists performing in the background. The movement was roughly two metres long and again the face of the camera had to be altered to keep the frame correct. There is no need for direction indicators on these drawings because we captured footage by doing each shot using different directions and then judged these shots when we had uploaded our footage to the computers. We can evaluate this shot by looking at the still from the music video thats pictured below.

Our next task was to film the movement shot of the lead guitarist. Again, the artist is marked with a bold back dot, but in this shot the movement is coming towards to the artist and also being taken from a low angle (off-stage). The vertical line in the image below shows the end of the stage and the camera is on a lower level than the artist, this meant that as the camera came towards the artist, the camera operator that was controlling the direction of the lense had to alter the direction on a horizontal axis in order to keep he lead guitarists face in shot. In professional music videos a dolly might be mounted to a track, almost like a train on its line. This gives a perfectly smooth tracking shot, despite the texture of the ground. However, the dolly we used seemed to do the job as it has given a sucessful shot thats now in our rough cut. The image below shows the moment in the shot when the camera is in the position marked in the drawing.