Message to the Moderator

Dear Sir/Madam

For my A2 media coursework, I was asked to create a Music Video, I have produced this blog to show the  large body of work that has gone into this section of my A2 media course. It includes research elements of work, planning into my own music video, The construction of the music video, The  evaluation of the overall products and experience and final products that I have produced.

I worked with Bronte Rose Ainsley through out my coursework project, As you navigate through my blog using the labeled tabs at the top of my blog, you will also see some of Bronte's work as well as my own work shared within this blog, as we worked as a team so her work is contributing to mine and vice verser.

Please feel free to take a look through my blog, I hope you enjoy the work I have produced, as much as I enjoyed producing it.

Regards

Rachel Harriman  

Question 4

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

 

Question 2

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

Question 1

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

Question 3

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Studio Test Footage

Here is test footage from the Green screen studio, This shows how he have incorporated our artist in a professional surrounding using the lighting, the green screen to change the backgrounds at different parts of the song and her preforming to make it more interesting visually.

Test Footage 5

this footage was taken of one of the solo dancers , using a more street related dance style which we felt gave a twist to our genre and style to the video. Although this was originally test footage we decided to use it in our final video as we liked the feel it gave to our video within this recording.

Test Footage 4

Within this test foot shot I have recorded the dancers , doing the routine at half time, experimenting with zoom and focusing also camera movement to help make our video more visually interesting.

Test Footage 3

 

This is a simple clip showing Bronte learning the dancers the routine to show how much thought and personal time we spent to make our video more profesional.

Test Footage 2

I filmed this test footage using bright white lights to see how this would look on camera as a possible effect to use in the video, Again in this shot it shows Bronte learning the dancers the routine at another practice session.

Test Footage 1

Here is short clip of est footage that i recorded on my camera to experiment with the focus and see how the lighting looked on footage. Bronte was learning the performers the dance routine at this time.  

Professional Feedback

Professional feedback from bronterachel

I got in contact with a relation of mine which works in the media industry as a 2nd Director, with high standards of experience in this industry and working with music videos on a daily basic, we found their feedback for our video very helpful, making suggestion that if we had more time for production we thought about applying to help improve on the professional factor to our video.    

Peer feedback 3

Peer feedback 2

Peer feedback 1

This is some peer feedback we received from class members which are also making a music video.  We have took the feed back into consideration and feel it has helped use to finalise the final little details we found ourselves not been able to conclude. 

Final Fonts

Final fonts from bronterachel

Here is the final fonts I have decided to use on our Magazine advert and Digipak and also at the start of the video, as the font will create a brand identity to our artist Jenny. 

Test Fonts

Test fonts from bronterachel

I tested out the fonts first before applying them straight to our products to show how I have took the time and thought about the overall finished look, to make a strong quality product. 

Question 4 draft

Question 4 from bronterachel

Question 3 Draft

Question 3 from bronterachel

Question 2 Draft

Question 2 from bronterachel

Question 1 Draft

Question 1 from bronterachel

Evaluation Questions & Draft Ideas

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

-       Discuss how your music video follows conventions. You could give examples from real media texts and discuss how these then influenced yours.

(Point out parts in our music video and compare the relation with inspirational music videos) *do this by having an interview scenario with Jenny, as the music artist, and talking as though she has expressed her ideas to the producer and also interview the producer to show how they have applied these ideas, methods and techniques* cut to inspirational videos. 

-       Discuss how you developed conventions. Were the conventions you used then developed further or adapted?
(Point out parts in our music video and compare the relation with inspirational music videos) *do this by having an interview scenario with Jenny, as the music artist, and talking as though she has expressed her ideas to the producer and also interview the producer to show how they have applied these ideas, methods and techniques* cut to inspirational videos. 
-       Discuss how you challenged typical conventions of music videos within your chosen genre. Did you attempt to include other elements to make your product stand out from the rest?
(Point out parts in our music video and compare the relation with inspirational music videos) *do this by having an interview scenario with Jenny, as the music artist, and talking as though she has expressed her ideas to the producer and also interview the producer to show how they have applied these ideas, methods and techniques* cut to inspirational videos. 
-       Consider music video theory to support your judgements about your work.

(Talk about the theories and theorists which apply to our video) *do this by interviewing the producer talking about how and why they applied certain theories. 

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? ( To answer this question we will take images of and from our products and uses a voice over to put it together into final cut to make a visual video and audio piece to answer this question.)

-       Consider the brand identity of your products. (The relation of the brand identity and theme within the products and our logo etc.) 

-       Deconstruct your ancillary texts and discuss how you used conventions. (identify the conventions step by step to help build up the professional look to our products)

-       Discuss how your ancillary texts reflect the themes/narrative of your video. (discuss the theme of the the products we have created by identifying strong conventions an how everything reflects)        

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback? (continue the interview scenario, but from the audiences point of view as well as the producers )

-       Gather audience feedback from various sources – eg. social networking, focus groups.
(Gather research from a focus groups, have a possible two groups one that is a focal target audience and one that is a non related audience and get feed back from both groups. Possibly have a discussion with both groups together and see how there ideas reflect or rebel from one another.) *show parts of the video as they mention it* 

-       Discuss the feedback you have received – what worked well? Were there any areas which you need to focus on in the future? give this point from the producers point of view, as though we are thinking of new ideas for improvement from the feed back we have received from the focus groups.  

-       You could also link in some audience theory. Consider Stuart Hall (encoding/decoding).

Our theme is to portray the conventions of a strong female character, leading other females through life. We have set the video with a 50's theme to it, which also conveys how females of this age are not always classified as a typical house wife and it shows how female lives have changed over time .  
Preferred- This is our theme and the preferred theory is if the target audience agree to our theme.
Negotiated- This is if the target audience agree with our theme but also give there own input to the theory. 
Oppositional- This is if the target audience go completely against our theory.  

   

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? (use screenr to answer this question)

-       Consider all of the technologies you have used for all aspects of your production.
(introduction to this question using a powerpoint to state the softwares we have used , Why we chose to use them and how they have helped us to make our products in comparison to others.)
-       Detail the exact features of the software you used and give an example as to where you used these in your products.
(use screenr to record examples of us editing our work and record a voice over to state what we are doing at each point.)

Each question must be presented using one of the following methods:

Prezi

-       Your Prezi must include images and embedded youtube video to exemplify points made. Make sure you set a motion path so that the examiner can be guided through your answer. 

PowerPoint

-       Make your presentation interesting by using lots of images to exemplify points made.

Video 

-       Include video clips, titles and images to add interest to your video and exemplify points made.

Level 4 16–20 marks

There is excellent skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the evaluation.

There is excellent understanding of the forms and conventions used in the productions.

There is excellent understanding of the role and use of new media in various stages of the production.

There is excellent understanding of the combination of main product and ancillary texts.

There is excellent understanding of the significance of audience feedback.

There is excellent skill in choice of form in which to present the evaluation.

There is excellent ability to communicate.

Reece shot 2

FINAL music video

Through out  the production of our music video we had some technical problems when exporting the footage from a DSLR camera , this meant that our footage from the studio and the DSLR footage was set at a different size ratio, this meant we had to watch our video very carefully for any movement from the shots to help keep a professional quality to our overall video. We also added some more moving shots into the video which was suggested from our audience feedback as this kept our video conventional to the pop genre. We did a final check over our video just to sharpen all the little features up. Personally I am proud of what I have achieved from producing this video and I hope you feel it has meant the standards we have set out to achieve as we have taking every second of this video into consideration to try and perfect it as best as possible.

Draft Digipak

 Here is a drafted version of the digipak for the album of our artist. To keep the brand identity consistent through out all three of our products I have edited all six images for each pain in the cover using the same photoshop tutorial as I used for the Advert to help add the 50's theme as well as the brand identity. I have chosen to use a photograph for every pain as the images are strong and represent the strengths of females which is also what we have portrayed through our music video and song choice. AS this is just a draft I have mainly focused on the image choice to see how they work in a simple layout and some of the conventional items to a digipak. I have not gone into any finer details with the text or copy right print, this will be resolved after Bronte and I have discussed our opinions with this layout .

Background Images

Here are some possible background colours that we have considered using in the green screen for filming against, We decided on colours that resemble a Pop genre and a 50's theme to portray the full concept of our music video.

Magazine Advert with peer feedback improvements

After receiving peer feedback we where please to here that the only critique that we received was to fill in the stars on the star ratings. We took this information into account as we want our products to achieve the same level as professional magazine adverts we see in magazines of today. I experimented with filling in the starts with black, red, yellow and white, all colors which are saturating a certain part of the image, The yellow worked the best  making it stand out against the red and white surrounding it, also portray a connotation to a star.

Final Magazine Advert

After producing the 2nd draft for the magazine advert and being pleased with the outcome of the product we decided to go with this one for the final advert as it gave a strong professional look to our artist brand identity and also promotes the product efficiently. Using complimentary colors throughout the advert and also using a strong image of the star to sell the product.   

CD cover

Using a image from the telephone dial that i took in the photo shoot from happy daze I have produced a cover for the CD for the album , using the phone dial and highlighting the letters that spell out the song title that is issued on the album and is the featuring song of our music video. This is a very simplistic design however it works well and fits with the theme of our video and products. 

Final Digipak

We decided that the layout to the digipak worked well and complimented the advert and the music video well. However I have adjusted the brightness and contrast on some of the images to make them all similar in tones and saturation. I have also finished off the layout by adding in the spines and the small text to make look more complete professional and fit for public sale. Over all I am pleased with the outcome of this digipak and hope it meets the standards of a professional product as I have spent a lot of time on finalizing the final features to make it meet the highest standards. 

2nd Draft Magazine Advert

On this draft I have changed the colour of the Album name and the song title to white from yellow, which is a bit more subtle to look at and it compliments better to the theme of the dinner and the 50's retro look as white red and black was a popular saturation to use. I had also used the white in the website and also on the ratings from pop music magazines and it works well for the as well. It makes he advert look more crisp and professional to finish off its look.  

Final cut

We have added our record label and Jenny's name and the song name to the start of the song to give it the opening of a Pop genre music video to help portray the conventions conveniently. As you can see we have add in motion paths within some of the footage to make the clips move across the screen , this was inspired from the Beyonce countdown video as it makes it more visually interesting and keeps the audience entertained. The effect of these worked really well and it has created a motif through our video. All the blank space is now filled in the video from dance footage, dinner shots, projections or studio footage, Having a variety of shot helped make the video visually entertaining to the audience, using our technical skills we matches the shots to the beat of the song creating thought beats which is a typical convention of a pop music video. We have made good progress to finish our video however it may need a few tinny tweaks to create a professional sharp finish to our work.